I’m a relatively new Catholic, and a news article today that the heart of St. Pio is coming the United States caught my attention today and I don’t understand why the dismemberment of a saint is ok with the Church? Can someone educate me on this? If a regular person dies, they are supposed to be wholly interred, meaning that even if they are cremated their remains aren’t to be scattered. I know that there are exceptions made for donations of organs and for medical research. But I’m curious what makes the dismemberment of a Saint ok? It just seems…wrong.
In point of fact, the requirement is that the body of the deceased be treated with that reverence and respect that it is due in light of the dignity that it has and in view of its future destiny, at the Resurrection of the Dead.
In the process of preparing the body for burial/embalming the corpse, various processes can be carried out. There is a long standing custom in Europe with extraordinary figures (not uniquely those thought very likely candidates for canonization) to extract the heart and preserve it.
Contemporary autopsies can involve removal and examination of various organs, the description of which I don’t think is advantageous beyond simply being illustrative that the preparation for burial can involve procedures beyond donation of the body or specific organs for medical research or transplant.
At the point of death and burial, what we would consider first class relics that may have been preserved are likely to be predominantly clippings of hair, perhaps clippings of nails, and – because of medical procedures – excess samples/vials of blood, which predominate in both Saint John Paul II and Saint Teresa of Calcuta. Otherwise the body is not typically dismembered, setting aside cases such as the martyrdoms of Saints John Fisher and Thomas More where their dismemberment was the cause of their deaths.
In the process for beatification, there is a canonically mandated exhumation, which is to occur in the presence of ecclesiastical authorities (obviously with the cooperation of civil authorities and of the necessary workmen) and which is to occur at its proper time in order to authenticate the body and its condition as part of the process of investigation.
Given the normal passage of time for these causes to progress…which are typically decades and not years…the natural process results in a retrieval of some parts of the body without dramatic intervention, particularly if the body has become skeletal.
Often, in the stages before beatification, the remains of the pending Blessed will be transferred to a place where they can be enshrined and available to be visited by the faithful. Often this will be in a church or oratory. This casket may be, relative to a coffin, significantly smaller and the remains significantly lighter.
Sometimes they will be displayed in (or in association with) a figure that evokes the body of the blessed (at times, it is the body itself) behind a glass or lead crystal front on the altar and sometimes not. The former is the case with the altars of Pope Saint John XXIII and Pope Saint Pius X but latter is the case with the remains of Pope Saint John Paul II, which are completely encased within the altar that serves as his tomb/shrine. All of these, of course, are in the main level of the Basilica of Saint Peter.
This translation of the body/remains does not always happen, however. The decision was that the body of Saint Gianna Molla would remain in the cemetery in which she was buried, for example.
Of course, for completeness, I should add there are cases in which there are no remains…such as the martyrs from the concentration camps of World War II.
Normal first class relics that are displayed in a typical
theca will be so small…a slight bone chip, for example…that they are not really recognisable as an aspect of the body but, of course, even at that level these are to be treated with reverence since the relic is part of the saint’s body.
I remember for one relatively recently canonised saint (who had been dead for some 150 years), the relic displayed was a bone that, if you had a basic knowledge of human anatomy, one would instantly recognise as of the hand. The presentation of such a relic is part of the rite of canonisation and also, actually, beatification.
The prescription now is that a relic that is entombed in an altar where Mass is said should be of sufficient size that it is discernible as a part of the body of the saint whose relic is being incorporated into the altar…typically, these relics are
ex ossibus (from the bone) to facilitate ease of transport…though it could be a vial of blood, I suppose.
You can find a treatment about this by a theologian colleague here:
ewtn.com/library/Liturgy/zlitur80.htm
Beyond that, this article may be of use:
ewtn.com/library/ANSWERS/RELICS.HTM