Vatican says ashes cannot be scattered in newly published guidelines

The Vatican has said that Catholics who want to be cremated cannot have their ashes scattered, divided up or kept at home.

In newly published guidelines, the Catholic Church said cremation remains should instead be stored in a sacred, church-approved place.

The new instructions were released just in time for Halloween and All Souls’ Day on November 2, when the faithful are supposed to pray for and remember the dead.

For most of its 2,000-year history, the Catholic Church only permitted burial, arguing that it best expresses the Christian hope in resurrection. However, in 1963, the Vatican explicitly allowed cremation so long as it did not suggest a denial of faith about resurrection.

The new document from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith repeats that burial remains preferred, but lays out guidelines for conserving ashes for the increasing numbers of Catholics who choose cremation.

It said it is doing so to counter what it called “new ideas contrary to the church’s faith” which had emerged since 1963, including the notion that death is a “fusion” with Mother Nature and the universe, or the “definitive liberation” from the prison of the body.

To set the faithful straight, the Vatican said ashes and bone fragments cannot be kept at home, since that would deprive the Christian community as a whole from remembering the dead.

Rather, church authorities should designate a sacred place, such as a cemetery or church area, to hold them. Only in extraordinary cases can a bishop allow ashes to be kept at home, it said.

The document said remains cannot be divided among family members or put in lockets or other mementoes. Nor can the ashes be scattered in the air, land or sea since doing so would give the appearance of “pantheism, naturalism or nihilism”, the guidelines said.