Catholic Dictionary

Find accurate definitions of over 5,000 Catholic terms and phrases (including abbreviations). Based on Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

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CEMETERY

A parklike enclosure reserved as a burial place. A Catholic cemetery is blessed by a bishop or by a priest deputed by him; the individual graves need no further blessing unless desecrated. The grave of a Catholic in a non-Catholic cemetery should be individually blessed. All who die in the Church have a right to ecclesiastical burial in consecrated ground. (Etym. latin coemeterium; from Greek koimeterion, sleeping chamber, burial place.)