Q: Can an unbaptized baby or a baby who has died in utero receive funeral rites?
Jul 6, 2024

Q: Can an unbaptized baby or a baby who has died in utero receive funeral rites?

A: The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that as “regards children [infantes] who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them” (1261). Prior to the liturgical reforms of 1970s “there was no Christian funeral rite for unbaptized infants and such infants were buried in unconsecrated ground” (International Theological Commission, “The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized,” 100). As the Catechism indicates, according to the Roman Missal, in the Masses for the Dead, there is a Mass formulary For the Funeral of a Child Who Died before Baptism. After this heading, the Roman Missal explains that if “a child whom the parents wished to be baptized, dies before Baptism, the Diocesan Bishop…may permit the funeral to be celebrated in the home of the deceased child, or even according to the form of funeral rites otherwise customarily used in the region.”

It is important to note here that this is a decision left to the diocesan bishop to determine, likely because of how such funerary rites are related to the necessity of Baptism for salvation and the danger of obscuring Baptism’s necessity in the eyes of the faithful (see Canon 1183 §2). Related to the sensitivity surrounding this pastoral reality, the preference for the funerary rites in this situation is “a Liturgy of the Word” rather than a Mass. However, the Missal gives a complete Mass formulary in situations when “the celebration of Mass is judged opportune.” Nevertheless, it notes that “proper care is to be taken that the doctrine of the necessity of Baptism is not obscured in the minds of the faithful.”


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