Vatican issues new rules for handling relics of sainthood candidates

The Vatican’s saint-making office has updated its rules governing the use of relics of would-be saints, issuing detailed new guidelines Saturday that govern how body parts and cremated remains are to be obtained, transferred and protected for eventual veneration.

The instructions explicitly rule out selling the hair strands, hands, teeth and other body parts of saints that often fetch high prices in online auctions. They also prohibit the use of relics in sacrilegious rituals and warn that the church may have to obtain consent from surviving family members before unearthing the remains of candidates for sainthood.

Officials said the guidelines were necessary given some obstacles that had emerged since the rules were last revised in 2007, particularly when surviving relatives and church officials disagreed. One current case before a U.S. appeals court concerns a battle over the remains of Fulton Sheen, an American archbishop known for his revolutionary radio and television preaching in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Sheen’s niece went to court to force the archdiocese of New York to transfer Sheen’s body from under the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to Peoria, Ill., where Sheen was born, ordained a priest and where his sainthood cause has been launched by Peoria’s bishop.

The New York archdiocese refused to give up the remains and appealed a 2016 lower court ruling in favor of the niece. A decision from the appeals court is expected soon.

Msgr. Robert Sarno of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints said it’s impossible to know what difficulties could complicate a saint-making case or whether the new guidelines might have helped avoid the legal battle over Sheen.

But Sarno said the Vatican believed the updates were needed anyway to provide bishops around the world with a detailed, go-to guide in multiple languages to replace the Latin instructions that provided only general rules to follow.

New to the protocols is a section that makes clear that bishops must have the “consent of the heirs” in regions where the bodies of the dead legally belong to surviving family members. The revised instructions lay out in detail how a body is to be unearthed, saying it must be covered with a “decorous” cloth while a relic is being taken and then reburied in clothes of similar style.

The guidance also explicitly allows for cremated remains to be used as relics. For most of its 2,000-year history, the Roman Catholic Church only permitted burial of human remains, arguing that it best expressed the Christian hope for resurrection. But in 1963, the Vatican explicitly allowed cremation as long as it didn’t suggest a denial of faith about resurrection.

The new instruction also makes clear that bishops must agree in writing to any transfer of the remains, and calls for absolute secrecy when a body is unearthed and a relic taken for eventual veneration.

The document repeats church teaching that relics from candidates for sainthood can only be venerated publicly once they have been beatified, the first step to possible sainthood.