Is it unseemly to fight over the corpse of a dead priest - who has been dead for 35 years?
Is this a Catholic thing? It seems like a black eye in the face of the Catholic Church – rather tacky and unseemly.
Bishop Sheen died in 1979, and his corpse buried in New York City. Peoria Illinois wants thee body as well, and built a shrine for it.
Does it matter? Why can’t they leave the dead guy alone?
Unbelievable that this goes in in the year 2014
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YEs unseemly to say the least. The priest would be ashamed of them, I’m sure.
Seriously, with everything that needs attention in this screwed up world of ours this is something of importance? Pffft!
They should have cremated the guy and then everyone could have had a little salt shaker of him. Preposterous!
Can they not just cut the corpse in half?
Geez, they could at least respect the wishes of the family.
“Unseemly”, yes. “Tacky”, yes. But the reasoning for the conflict goes way beyond the tug-of-war aspect.
From the article:
“Now the dispute over Archbishop Sheen’s corpse has brought a halt to his rise to sainthood, just as he appeared close to beatification, the final stage before canonization. Bishop Daniel R. Jenky, Peoria’s leader, announced this month that the process had been suspended because New York would not release the body.”
If Archbishop Sheen is indeed being seriously considered for canonization by the Vatican, then “ownership” (for lack of a better word) of the remains would give a significant economic and political (from the Church’s standpoint) advantage to whichever parish in which his holy earthly remains may lie.
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