Are 2 funeral masses allowed

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ELROD

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My MIL is about to pass away and her request is to have her funeral mass at her old Church and be buried with her husband. Well for the last few years she has been living about 500 miles away from there, with us her family, then an apartment, then a nursing home. So there are people here that know her and us and so I was just wondering if we could have a very small mass at our church and then we would transport her so she could have the mass at her old home church and be interned with her husband. By the way she would be cremated back here at her request.
 
I don’t know about 2 funeral masses, but you can certainly have a mass in memory of her and then a funeral Mass…

@frdavid96
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Ok, well, in my imagination, I think of a mass with no organ or piano, I don’t think a lot of people would come in the first place. She is very old and doesn’t really have a lot of family or friends in this area. So, yes I would talk to our priest, I was just thinking that some of our little family would benefit from having a mass here, they might find it very difficult to go 500 miles away.
 
I would ask the priest, but I think a better strategy would be to have the funeral Mass at the old Church as your MIL requested and bury her there, and then arrange a second memorial service for your MIL in the other area.

You may not be able to have a second funeral Mass, but the priest or deacon can definitely do a prayer service at a funeral home or other gathering place, and you can also probably have a Mass said for her soul at the church in your area, although the timing/ scheduling of that may have to be in the future if their Mass book is already full (it depends on the church).

My husband had a similar situation as he had been living and working about 500 miles away from where he grew up and where most of his family still lived. So he had a lot of friends from work, neighbors, etc. in the new area, but his family was back in the old area. I chose to have his funeral with the family back in the old area and have him buried next to his other deceased relatives in the local cemetery. This also makes it easy for his brother to visit the graves because his brother does not have a lot of money or time to travel (it’s relatively easy for me to travel there).

Then I had a separate memorial service in the area where he had been working, and his work friends and neighbors came to that, and a deacon came and did a prayer service consisting of reading scripture and saying some prayers. The deacon also arranged to have some Masses said for my husband’s soul but those are being said on various days over a couple of months when there was a space on the Mass calendar for the local church.

Perhaps some similar arrangement would work for your MIL.
 
The short answer to your question is “yes” you can do that.

You’ll need to work out all the details with both parishes. This sort of thing is actually done all the time, so it is NOT a problem.

The Church prefers (quite strongly prefers) that the funeral Mass be done with the full body present. Cremation (no longer prohibited) should be done after the funeral Mass. Although the strong preference is to have the funeral first, it is permitted to have the funeral Mass done with the cremated remains.

As for what happens in the “back home” church, you’ll have to contact them when the time comes; but that’s just a matter of logistics. The pastor where she will be interred has an obligation to provide the rite of internment. This should not be a problem at all, but a relatively simple matter of scheduling.
 
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