Why the Church is discouraging families from bringing home urns this Undas

Local

THE dead should be allowed to rest where they were laid to rest, the Catholic Church said, discouraging families from taking home urns from columbaries during Undas.

Manila Cathedral vice rector Fr. Vicente Gabriel Bautista issued the reminder in response to a Facebook announcement by the Mandaluyong City government allowing relatives to temporarily retrieve urns kept at the Ash Repository of the columbarium at Garden of Life Memorial Park.

Under the arrangement, families could take home the urns from October 22 to 29 and were required to return them by November 5.

The city government said the initiative was intended to reduce the number of people visiting cemeteries during the Undas period while giving families an opportunity to pay their respects to their deceased relatives.

Bautista, however, said urns already placed in columbarium niches should remain there, even if families intend to bring them home only temporarily. He said the designated resting places of the dead in cemeteries and columbaries should be respected.

“That is why we say ‘rest in peace’. We want them to rest in the peace of the Lord, away from the noise,” he said in a Philstar report.(MyTVCebu)