This is the same Pope who allowed atheists into Heaven, but apparently, this generosity of spirit will not be extended to people who do not treat the roasted remains of their dead relatives properly. In the eyes of the Pope, putting your box of Grandma on the mantelpiece, making her into jewelry, scattering her over the ocean or the Grand Canyon, shooting her into space or loading her into shotgun shells and blowing her over the back forty while you polish off an eighteen-pack is ixnay.
I am old enough to remember that, in my Catholic youth, Catholics were not permitted to be cremated at all. This was based on the Catholic belief in the resurrection of the dead, which was supposed to occur when Jesus returned to judge us all. Dead Catholics were supposed to be resting in one piece in their graves, so they could be roused whole by the angels and frog-marched before Jesus for eternal sentencing. Catholics weren’t even supposed to donate their organs for fear of going to Heaven without necessary livers or corneas.
The Church adjusted, though, since many Catholics wanted those donated Catholic organs and they also wanted to be cremated. The Church nowadays lets you give away your parts when you’re done with them. They also admitted that God the Almighty could reconstitute you from burnt ash at least as well as He could glop you back together from whatever bits were left in your grave, when the time came for you to face the eternal music.
However, God does not want to pick you out from a coral reef, vacuum your constituent molecules out of whatever canyon or swamp your relatives chose to fling them over, or retrieve them from space. He does not even want to open the closet door and snatch you out from where your kids left you, between those boxes of old tax returns and the board games that they never play anymore.
Wadding all of the dead humans who ever existed back together so they can learn their fate for forever is a big job, even for a Guy with all eternity on his hands.
And before you say “God can do anything,” think about that. And get some humility. You can’t even put together a coffee table from IKEA.
That’s what the Pope is trying to tell us. It has special meaning for me because my girl and I are planning to plant some of her late brother’s ashes in the back yard eventually, and use them to nourish a memorial plant. We were leaning towards a cactus, because although her brother was a great guy and a good friend to both of us, he didn't suffer fools gladly. He could be a little bit prickly.
Obviously, this would not be Pope-approved. Fortunately, the guy was an atheist, so he’s already in Heaven.