Cremation increases as living seek more space

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 20

Cremation increases as living seek more space

By

CHRIS MIDDLETON

in London

As the world’s big cities fill to overflowing with living people, many of them are coming to the conclusion that the time has come to evict their dead. As pressure on urban space increases, the value of the world’s graveyards is being questioned. Why, it is asked, should the dead be given such a luxury when many thousands of living people are crammed together in city squalour? That question has been taken up vigorously by the International Cremation Federation (1.C.F.) with the recent launching of its “Save the Land for the Living’ campaign. Already some 23 nations belong to the 1.C.F., and that number is expected to grow rapidly. In addition to being more hygienic and less distressing, the I.C.F. also claims that cremation inevitably saves space, with the deceased’s ashes being transferred to an urn, and given to relatives. The whole issue has come into prominence in recent months. In Cairo, for example, the city authorities are at a loss about how to deal with the 500.000 homeless people who have taken uo residence in one of the city’s big gravevards now known as the “City of the Dead.” And in Portugal, the gravevards of Lisbon are ranidlv running out of space. The vice-president of the

city’s cemeteries has said that serious health problems from unburied bodies could ensue if there was a sudden wave of deaths in Lisbon. Such problems could be averted, say the advocates of cremation, if overcrowded cities were to follow the example erf Hong Kong, where, with a population of five million crammed into a mere 403 square miles, graveyards are out of the question, -and cremation is the order of the day. In Japan, some 85 per cent of the dead are cremated. followed by Britain, (63 per cent), Rhodesia (51 per cent) and Denmark (50 per cent). In New Zealand about 45 per cent are cremated. In all these countries, as in Sweden, Australia. Czechoslovakia and Switzerland, cremation has become increasingly favoured in recent years, and the practice is increasing at a rate of about 3 per cent a year.

But as well as these more developed countries, a number of less affluent nations are seeking to develop cremation facilities. In recent years, Brazil, Guatemala. Nepal and Mauritius have all drawn up plans for their first crematoria, and the I.C.F. expects more to follow suit.

The speed with which cremation’s popularity grows can be seen in countries such as Holland, Spain and Portugal, all of which did not possess crematoria 15 years ago. Holland’s crema-

tion rate, for instance, now stands at 29 per cent. However, what prompted those countries to adopt cremation was not urban overcrowding, but a 1963 directive from Pope Paul VI lifting the ban on Roman Catholics being cremated. Until then, cremation held the same “untouchable” status inside the Catholic faith as abortion or birth control. Indeed, cremation is still forbidden by a number of religions, including Parsee, Muslim, Orthodox Jewish. Greek and Russian Orthodox faiths. And a large number of countries remain without any crematoria, including the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, which sends ail its cremation cases to France.

But in spite of opposition, the fact remains that cremation is a growing industry. And as cremation grows, so burial declines. In Britain, for example, many municipal authorities are now “sinking” graces of more than 100 years’ standing and using the land for building. Anyone buried in a municipal cemeterv now only has 75 years before his or her grave is similarly erased. If the trend continues, graveyards could end up becoming a thing of the past, and man’s eternal res-ting-place could become as temporary as an urban bedsitter.

Copyright: World Feature Services, Ltd, 1979.