THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Lincoln has granted a faculty permitting the exhumation and cremation of remains that had been buried in the consecrated part of Canwick cemetery in 1992, so that they could be transported for reburial in a cemetery in Shenzhen, China.
The petitioner for the faculty was Wing Ling Wong Dolata, whose husband, Siu Lam Wong, died suddenly in October 1992, when Mrs Wong was 42 and had two young children. At that time, no burial plot had been obtained in China, and there was no question of transporting the body back to China; so she decided that the burial of her husband would take place in the UK.
In 2013, Mrs Wong had the funds to buy a burial plot in Shenzhen, adjacent to the one in which other close family members had been buried, and, in 2023, she had the funds to pay for her husband’s remains to be exhumed, cremated, and transported to China.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Judge Mark Bishop, was concerned about the lapse of time before the application had been made, and, in particular, the lapse between obtaining the burial plot in Shenzhen in 2013 and the application in 2023. That issue was relevant in assessing the genuineness of the reasons set out in Mrs Wong’s application for wanting her husband’s remains returned to Shenzhen.
The Chancellor was satisfied that the explanations given for the delay did not rule out her application. It was understandable, the Chancellor said, that, as Mrs Wong got older and frailer, the issue of where her late husband’s remains should be located, and also hers when the time came, had become more focused in her mind.
The real justification for Mrs Wong’s application was that it was to be a family grave. She wished her husband’s remains and her own to be united together in a family grave next to her other relatives.
The Chancellor accepted that those wishes were entirely genuine, and also took into account Mrs Wong’s particular family circumstances, including the young age of her husband when he died, and the difficulty of achieving burial in China at that time.
In those circumstances, it was to be regretted, the Chancellor said, that no one had fully explained to Mrs Wong at the time of her husband’s death the significance of the permanence of Christian burial in the consecrated part of the cemetery. But allowance had to be made for the difficulties of language, which had been a problem in understanding the factual background of Mrs Wong’s application.
It was always exceptional to grant an exhumation order, the Chancellor said, but he was satisfied that exceptional reasons did exist in Mrs Wong’s case for the exhumation to be permitted. The interment in a family plot in Shenzhen would be an expression of family unity, and it also had to be taken into account that it was where Mrs Wong wished her own remains to be interred eventually.
Mrs Wong wanted the remains to be cremated in the UK. The Chancellor was content for that to be done since the undertakers had confirmed that to be practical with a larger new casket. The ashes could then be taken to Shenzhen and interred there.
The Chancellor ordered that the exhumation must be carried out discreetly and with appropriate screening so as not to alarm those visiting the cemetery, and at a time when there would be minimal risk of visitors’ being aware of the exhumation. The reinterment in Shenzhen must take place within three months of the exhumation, and the ashes must not be kept awaiting much later interment.
