800 Attend Schiavo Mass Planned by Her Parents

Hundreds of mourners gathered Tuesday to remember Terri Schiavo at a funeral Mass arranged by her parents, while her husband held onto her cremated remains and planned a separate service.

The woman’s parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, sat in the front row of Most Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church, joined by their two grown children.

Outside, mourners sat in folding chairs or stood as the service was relayed on loudspeakers.

At least 800 people attended the service.

“She showed us how to live,” said Father Thaddeus Malanowski, who gave Schiavo last rites before she died Thursday.

“She showed us the gift of life and how we should share it.”

A table beside the altar held a photo of Schiavo taken in the 1980s before she suffered severe brain damage, one of the pictures widely shown in her last days. A photo and bust of Pope John Paul II were also on the table.

Schiavo’s parents had opposed her cremation and hoped to bury her in their adopted state of Florida.

But her husband, Michael Schiavo, had her cremated and said her ashes would be buried in his family’s plot in Pennsylvania, the state where Terri Schiavo grew up and where the couple met.

Michael Schiavo has not said when the memorial service will be held, but he is under a court order to notify Terri Schiavo’s parents of his plans.

The 41-year-old brain-damaged woman died Thursday after a long legal battle between her husband and her parents.

Court-appointed doctors said she was in a persistent vegetative state, and Michael Schiavo said his wife would not want to be kept alive artificially.

The case reached Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and the White House in recent weeks as the Schindlers tried to block the court order that allowed Michael Schiavo to have his wife’s feeding tube removed.