A Dignified Goodby to Two Abandoned Infants : Memorial: Services are Thursday for a girl whose body washed up on Sunset Beach and a boy whose body was found in a cardboard box in San Clemente.

More than four months after their tiny bodies were discovered, two babies who died in March after being abandoned, still tethered to their umbilical cords, will finally be laid to rest after a funeral service this week.

The bodies of a baby girl who washed up on shore at Sunset Beach and an infant boy found two days later in a cardboard box outside the Meadowlark West apartments in San Clemente will lie in state Thursday at Emanuel Lutheran Church in La Habra.

A period of visitation will be followed by an ecumenical Eucharist conducted by Father Patrick Callahan, associate pastor at St. Matthew American Catholic Church in Orange.

Callahan said he had asked the Orange County coroner’s office to release the bodies once an investigation was completed so that the children could be properly buried and remembered.

“I really feel that it would be unfortunate for these children to be just cremated and placed in a common grave as if they never existed,” Callahan said. “These children belong to Orange County. They were abandoned here, and one would imagine that their parents were probably residents here.

“There should be some awareness that they were here, even though they only lived for a brief period of time, maybe only a matter of hours,” he said.

The visitation will be from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the church, 150 N. Palm St. in La Habra, followed by the service.

“It is an ecumenical Catholic service, and we would invite any clergy who wanted to come to participate with us,” Callahan said.

On Friday at 10 a.m., the babies will be buried side by side at Memory Garden Memorial Park and Mortuary, 455 W. Central Ave., Brea. Callahan said Memory Garden is donating caskets and burial plots for the infants.

On March 11, the body of a newborn girl washed up on Newport Beach, where it was discovered tossing in the surf line by a woman out for a morning walk. The next day, the body of a second newborn girl was found on Sunset Beach, and, two days later the dead boy was discovered in San Clemente.

Callahan said the coroner’s office has completed its investigation of the Sunset Beach girl and the baby boy. Coroner’s investigators could not be reached for comment Saturday, but Callahan said the death of the baby boy was ruled a homicide. The body of the baby girl was too decomposed for investigators to make a determination, Callahan said.

The status of the investigation into the baby girl who washed up in Newport Beach was unclear Saturday. Her body will not be released, Callahan said.

Because the parents of the babies have not come forward, Callahan said, it “would be good for the people of Orange County to come together” and act as parents for the infants in order to lay them to rest.

“I think it’s the respectful thing to do,” he said. “It celebrates the dignity of children.”