I’ve always thought it odd that the Church has long condoned desecration of the body in its search for relics of saints. I wish I could remember which saint this was, but years ago I read about a saint who fell ill while travelling. He was anxious to get to his home monastery as he already had a reputation for saintliness and he was afraid of what would happen to his body if he died anywhere but at home. Sure enough, he died at a neighboring monastery & they did cut him up for relics.
I am rather at a loss as to why anyone would categorize the Church’s action of exhumation and retrieval of relics as *desecration *of the body since it is entirely oriented to honoring the body of the person, which is destined to be glorified in the resurrection, and the veneration of the newly beatified and canonized.
In the modern process, the body is exhumed (assuming the body was not lost, as was the case with various martyrs) according to an established protocol for a canonical recognition. At that point, first class relics are typically collected – but these are destined for the veneration of the faithful and, many times according to one of the Church’s most venerable traditions, incorporation into the sepulchre of an altar or else for exposition.
Conversely, desecration of the body would be, for example, what would have happened had the Roman mob succeeded in its attempt to seize the corpse of Pope Pius IX and throw it into the Tiber as it was being taken, per his request, to be entombed at the Basilica of Saint Lawrence Outside the Walls.
Normally, though not universally, the earthly remains is enshrined in conjunction with the process leading to beatification.
In any event, I believe you are referencing the end of life of Saint Thomas Aquinas and his death at the Abbey of Fossanova, some 60 miles southeast of Rome.
