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Greece had long banned cremation. Then it began running out of room for bodies

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  • Greece had long banned cremation. Then it began running out of room for bodies

    Source: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation...nned-cremation

    Greece had long banned cremation. Then it began running out of room for bodies
    By Maria Petrakis
    Dec. 29, 2019
    4 AM
    RITSONA, Greece —

    To show that cremation has long been part of the Greek way of life and death, Antonis Alakiotis proudly displays a wide range of funerary urns modeled on ancient Greek designs, available to house the ashes of your loved one for eternity. Prices start at $121.

    “You will see that one as you walk through the entrance to the Archaeological Museum,” Alakiotis says as he walks with a visitor through the Ritsona Crematorium, the first and only such facility in Greece. Alakiotis, president of the Greek Cremation Society, is at pains to make clear the ancient Greek legacy of cremation, a custom as traditionally Greek as a church burial.

    His sales pitch came just weeks after the first crematorium in modern-day Greece opened in late September, after decades of opposition from the country’s powerful Orthodox Church. Until then, Greece was the only country in modern-day continental Europe to not allow cremation. Those intent on turning a loved one’s remains into ashes needed to travel to neighboring Bulgaria, a costly and time-consuming process.

    While the Greek church teaches that cremation conflicts with teachings on resurrection, pressure to allow the practice mounted as cemeteries in most urban areas became increasingly overcrowded and began digging up remains after three years even though, in many cases, they have not fully decomposed. The remains are then stored aboveground indefinitely in ossuary boxes.

    Alakiotis was 14 when he had to watch his father’s body disinterred. In 1996 he promised a friend, a Greek Buddhist, that he would ensure his remains were cremated in Greece and to spare him the indignity of exhumation. The Greek Cremation Society was established a year later...
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