Catholics urged not to keep ashes of loved ones at home ahead of Undas

MANILA, Philippines — A Catholic priest has denounced keeping cremated remains at home or sealing them inside necklaces and other jewelry as a desecration of the dead, days before Filipinos observe All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day.

Rev. Fr. Nicanor Lalog II, chaplain of Our Lady of Fatima University, who also ministers to sick and elderly priests, said bringing a loved one’s ashes home is a “blasphemy” against the dead.

In a statement shared by Veritas, Lalog was quoted as saying that wearing the remains as a keepsake goes against Catholic teaching and amounts to a pagan practice.

He added that relatives should not divide even a small portion of the ashes among themselves, and that the Church strictly forbids scattering them in the air or at sea.

Lalog cited an instruction from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that does not allow cremated remains to be kept at home.

That document, Ad resurgendum cum Christo, was issued in 2016. It bans the scattering of ashes and requires that they be kept in a sacred place designated for that purpose.

In December 2023, the office, since renamed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said church authorities may weigh a family’s request to keep a minimal part of a relative’s ashes in a place of significance in the deceased’s life.

However, this allowance applies only if the rest of the remains are kept in a sacred place.

Lalog also faulted priests who bless ash-filled necklaces instead of correcting the practice.

He urged Catholics who still keep a relative’s ashes at home to move them to a cemetery or columbarium, where he said the remains can be properly cared for and prayed over, before All Saints’ Day on Sunday, Nov. 1, and All Souls’ Day on Monday.