158. On Burial

1. "When a wife has predeceased within the limits of a certain parish, no burial having been chosen, and the husband declaring that she is to be buried in the ancestral sepulcher of the husband himself, which is in the Church of another parish, supplication was made that it be defined: whether the husband could licitly do this for the predeceased wife?

R. That if the husband has his own burial place, the wife also is to be entombed in it; but if not, in the parish church within whose limits she died." S. R. C., Jan. 15, 1633, n. 601; I. M. 1150.

2. "The chaplain of a confraternity contended against the parish priest of the place that to himself, and not to the parish priest, belonged the right of performing the funeral office over corpses which, unless public cemeteries existed, would have to be buried in the public church of that confraternity.

R. The aforesaid right belongs to the parish priest when the one to be entombed is subject to the parish priest and to the parish within whose boundaries the aforesaid church of the confraternity is." S. R. C., Dec. 10, 1703, ad 20, n. 2123; Nov. 20, 1885, ad 4, n. 3645.

3. Primatius, advocate and parish priest, for the funeral rites of the Marquis de Fugatiis, his parishioner, yet to be entombed in another parish according to the latter's testament, contended against the rest of the clergy present, against the other parish priest of the entombing church, and against the chapter also of the cathedral church, invited with the others, that all ought to proceed under the cross of his parish, that he alone, vested with stole, ought to lead the funeral, and that he should fulfill all the functions of the obsequies. For it is a question, he says, of his own parishioner. - Is this rightly said?

R. Negatively. For 1.º "The corpses of the dead are to be accompanied with one cross only, which ought to be that of the church to which the body of the deceased is borne, provided that the chapter of the cathedral church does not intervene, under which all who accompany the funeral ought to proceed.

2.º The right and burden always belongs, even when the chapter of the cathedral church is present, yet outside this cathedral church, to the parish priest, of putting on the stole and performing all offices over the corpse of the deceased belonging to his church, until from the place of death it has entered the entombing church.

3.º The same parish priest has precedence over all the clergy, except if the chapter of the cathedral church has been present, which in the accompaniment will proceed after the parish priest himself. In this Case the more worthy member of the cathedral chapter proceeds with stole and cope, which the parish priest does not wear.

4.º If the deceased is to be entombed in another parish church, to the rector of that one church alone, likewise vested with stole, belongs the right and burden of performing the remaining offices there over the corpse, and of preceding all others, not even the parish priest of the deceased excepted, who, when the corpse has been brought to the threshold of the church, should withdraw." S. R. C., Apr. 23, 1895, n. 3854, Decr. sup. exequiis.