A mother detained in a maximum-security jail still had the right to organize a Catholic funeral for her son, which the state should have subsidized since she had no money for it, the Court said.
by Massimo Introvigne
The full text of a decision by the Colombian Constitutional Court rendered on June 5, 2024, in the case “María Yineth Perdomo Puentes vs. Instituto Colombiano de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses and others” has now been published. It is a veritable small treaty about funerals and burials and establishes the important principle that the right of having a funeral according to one’s religion is part of the right to freedom of religion or belief. A democratic state, the decision says, should also remove the obstacles connected with the exercise of this right, including when relatives do not have the necessary economic resources for the funeral or, as it happened in the case the Court decided, cannot complete the necessary bureaucratic formalities because they are in jail.
The case concerned a young man who died in a car accident on September 16, 2022. He was survived by his mother, an inmate in the maximum- and medium-security female jail “El Buen Pastor” in Bogotá. Because of her condition, the mother only learned of her son’s death after two months. It took time for her to understand that his body had remained in the morgue of the city of Neiva, located near the place of the accident, after the autopsy. In March 2023, she requested copy of the autopsy, which was denied since she was not part of the investigation on the accident and asked for a Catholic funeral and burial for her son in Bogotá. This was also denied, as the morgue administrators did not want to cover the corresponding costs and she had clarified she had no money. The morgue also objected that the woman had not filed the requested documents, nor had she appeared in person to reclaim her son’s body as their rules mandate.
On July 13, 2023, the woman sued the Colombian Institute of Forensic Medicine, based on the argument that her right to religious liberty was being denied. She explained that both she was, and her son had been a devout Catholic. She asked that her son “must have a holy burial, with the holy oils and a ceremony in accordance with our religious belief,” and pointed out that “the absence of a Christian burial had caused her intense suffering… few places are more unworthy than a morgue refrigerator, and few actions are more disrespectful of a mother’s pain than not giving her son burial.”
On July 28, 2023, the Court of Bogotá found against the mother, arguing that the right to have a son buried with a religious rite at the state’s expenses is not part of religious liberty. The woman went directly to the Constitutional Court.
Before the Court issued its decision, the case had become moot, since the woman finished purging her sentence and got out of prison on January 2, 2024. She went to Neiva, filed the necessary documents, and obtained her son’s body, which was buried with a Catholic rite on February 1, 2024, in the Cementerio del Norte in Bogotá.
However, the Constitutional Court decided that issuing a decision was still appropriate and “the circumstances that arose in this case require an analysis with the purpose of promoting education in constitutional matters about the rights and obstacles faced by persons deprived of liberty to claim the lifeless body of a deceased family member. It also seeks to prevent the repetition of situations such as these that violate the fundamental right to religious freedom and affect the dignified and respectful treatment of corpses. This ruling seeks to broaden the understanding of such fundamental rights and to alert about the inadmissibility of events such as those that occurred in the case of Mrs. María Yineth Perdomo Puentes and her son.”
From Sofocles’ “Antigone” to Poe, Kafka, and García Marquez, the Court quoted famous literary cases to show how leaving a relative without burial causes immense anguish. It concluded that “the lifeless body is the repository of moral values, beliefs and the object of religious acts, through which the family maintains a relationship with the deceased.” A religious funeral is part of worship, and “any act that unjustifiably impedes the exercise of religious worship violates the fundamental rights to freedom of worship and conscience. The economic inability of the relatives to assume the costs of the transfer, exhumation and/or burial of corpses cannot be an obstacle for the exercise of funeral rites. Such items must be covered by the municipal entities.”
The fact that the mother was in jail does not change the situation, the Court said. On the contrary, “The Court recognizes that persons deprived of liberty while serving their sentence, like all human beings, may go through painful situations such as the suffering of an illness, the agony of a loved one, or even their death. Professing a religion and worshipping in it can not only alleviate feelings of sadness, but also contribute in a positive way to overcoming challenging times.”
Although the case had been solved before the decision, the Court ordered the Colombian Institute of Forensic Medicine to adapt its regulations and make sure that no other person in the situation of the young man’s mother will be deprived of her religious liberty right to have a funeral for a deceased loved one according to her religion.
