Last week, a Reader, a resident of Bolesławiec, called us and told us that MOPS had organized the funeral of her neighbor. The latter lived alone and had no family.

It turned out that there was no priest at the funeral. The neighbors even tried to arrange matters with one of the clergymen. Their efforts came to nothing; they reportedly heard from the priest that “this is not a supermarket.”

As the Reader told us, the deceased woman was cremated and thrown into some kind of pit, while the ceremony itself did not take place in a chapel, but in an adjacent office.

“It ruined us mentally,” the woman commented.

The person who reported the matter was outraged that the funeral had proceeded in this way. She also told us that she had information that the ceremony had allegedly cost the Center just under PLN 2,000, even though the funeral allowance is twice as high.

Asked for comment, Tadeusz Kupczak, head of the Municipal Social Welfare Center, wrote in an email to the editorial office:

With reference to the case described, I inform you that the funeral of the beneficiary was not organized by MOPS, but by a private individual.

He added:

I believe that these allegations are unfounded.

The editorial office also received extensive explanations from Arsena, a company providing funeral services:

I explain that the funeral [...] took place in a dignified manner and in accordance with tradition. The only deviation was the absence of a person providing spiritual care. For our part—as a funeral home—we do not interfere in how the ceremony is conducted; this remains the responsibility of the family or relatives of the deceased.

Two days before the planned ceremony, the deceased woman's neighbors called us and offered to organize the Catholic rites. We provided them with a photocopy of the death certificate so that they could present it at the parish. We do not know why these people failed to complete the formalities—we only received information that there would be no priest, and therefore we booked the funeral without the chapel.

In accordance with the practice adopted at the Municipal Cemetery in Bolesławiec, when we know that there will be no person conducting the ceremony, we do not book the main chapel so as not to prevent people organizing a ceremony with full arrangements from using it.

Traditionally, the funeral procession then sets off from the chapel toward the grave, and that is what happened in this case. Our company tent was set up over the grave (a pit in the ground); the urn was not thrown in, but lowered on a lift. At the end of the ceremony, a company employee said a prayer. The burial site provided by the administration is located in the central part of the Cemetery, just behind the cross.

The fact that the deceased was cremated was supported by the fact that an urn burial plot at the Bolesławiec Cemetery is purchased for a one-time fee that does not have to be renewed after 20 years. In the case of [...], who was a person living alone, this was the decisive consideration, because in 20 years it is likely that no one would renew the fee for a traditional grave, and it would therefore be eliminated. The funeral costs for […], calculated according to market prices, would have significantly exceeded the funeral allowance; however, given the situation, we granted a substantial discount (estimate attached).

The funeral was not organized by MOPS, but by a private individual.

And indeed, we received scans of invoices showing that the funeral ceremony cost approximately PLN 4,400, not the two thousand mentioned by the Reader.

What do you think?