By PETER TATCHELL
Added: Sun, 25 Apr 2010 23:00:00 UTC

Original link

The Guardian - Comment Is Free - 4 September 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/catholicism.gayrights

The Vatican plans to exhume and rebury Cardinal John Henry Newman in a new tomb in Birmingham Oratory church, in preparation for him being made a saint later this year.

The Vatican is embarrassed that Newman is currently buried in the same grave as the man he shared much of his life with, Father Ambrose St John. Although inseparable in life and buried together for 118 years, the Catholic Church wants to now tear them apart.

Newman and St John have been buried side-by-side in a simple grave since Newman's death in 1890. It was what Newman wanted. He wrote to his executors shortly before his death stating emphatically: "I wish, with all my heart, to be buried in Father Ambrose St John's grave - and I give this as my last, my imperative will."

Despite this categorical instruction, the Vatican is now overturning it.

Where is the ethical justification for this desecration? Who gave the Catholic Church permission to defy Newman's solemn request?

Pope Benedict XVI has no right, and no moral or legal authority, to violate the Cardinal's wishes.

I suspect that most lay Catholics do not approve of the Vatican's antics. All my Catholic friends are horrified; believing that these reburial plans are offensive and insensitive.
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