Released on Tuesday, the Vatican’s new guidelines for Catholic practitioners wishing to be cremated state the remains “cannot be scattered, divvied up or kept at home, but rather stored in a sacred, church-approved place.”

Pope Francis approved the new measure on March 18. “In memory of the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord, burial is the most appropriate way to express our faith and hope in bodily resurrection,” he said. But in 1963, the Vatican explicitly allowed cremation as long as it didn't 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 the Church could not "condone attitudes or permit rites that involve erroneous ideas about death, such as considering death as the definitive annihilation of the person, or the moment of fusion with Mother Nature or the universe, or as a stage in the cycle of regeneration, or as the definitive liberation from the 'prison' of the body". Having consulted with the relevant Vatican congregations as well as with bishops’ conferences all around the world, the CDF concluded that the ashes of loved ones must be kept “in a holy place, that is a cemetery or a church or in a place that has been specifically dedicated to this purpose”. Only in extraordinary cases can a bishop allow ashes to be kept at home, it said. Sir, – The recent Vatican’s directive, Ad resurgendum cum Christo, issued by the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, concludes with the words “in order that any appearance of pantheism, naturalism or nihilism be avoided it is not permitted to scatter the ashes of the cremated in the air, on land at sea or in some other way as preserved in mementos,pieces of jewellery or other objects”.
The Catholic Church announces that cremated remains must be kept in consecrated land, rather than scattered about or kept at home. The Church first permitted cremation in 1963, but still strongly favours burial.