The Joint Christian Council will take a pledge at Vanchi square near the Kerala High Court on August 14 against burying the bodies of its members in church cemeteries.
“The programme is part of efforts by the council against the wrong notion that only those who are buried in church cemeteries will go to heaven,” Felix J. Pulludan, president of the council, said in a communication. The council alleged that priests were exploiting the faithful in the name of funeral rituals. A campaign to expose such wrong conventions will also be launched on the day.
The council alleged that Catholic churches had been collecting 20 to 30 times the land price in the name of granting rights for space allotted for burial in cemeteries. The church authorities are not even remitting the government’s share in that kind of land sale, it alleged.
