The Sun. — 1861-04-23 (London, England)

CIRCULAR TO THE GOVERNORS, INTENDENTS GENERAL, AND DISTRICT INTENDENTS. " Department of the Interior.  " The laws and usages regulating the establishment, purpose, and removal of cemeteries, and the burial of the dead, also out of the locality where the death has taken place, having been based on the general principle of abolishing, for the benefit of the public health, all privileges, with few and well defined exceptions, they could not consistently admit, in the differences of the various religions persuasions held by the inhabitants of the kingdom, any sufficient ground or motive for modifying the general principle sanctioned by these regulations— that is to say, that all interments without distinction shall take place in the common cemeteries. But considerations of a nature entirely foreign to the principles of public health, and directly connected with the rites and religious beliefs professed by the populations, suggest the expediency of admitting within the limits of one and the same enclosure (where such does not exist already) a separation of locality for the use of non-Catholics, with a view to obviating, as far as it is possible, the opposition and the remonstrances which promiscuous interments, though in very rare and exceptional cases, have not failed to give rise to, and which have their principal origin and most natural explanation in long-existing usages. "The undersigned therefore consider it expedient to call the attention of the Governors, IntendentsGenera!, and District Intendents to this subject, in crdcr that they may, in accordance with certain principles and uniform rules, issue, when the case occurs, such directions as may be most in harmony with the principles enunciated. " In conformity therefore with the general maxim that all burials shall take place in general cemeteries', a portion of each of these, when no distinct locality for this object exists already, shall be marked off so 4s to distinguish one part of the area from the remainder by a ditch, or wall, or hedge, according to each case and to the nature of the buildings of the place, for the burial of non•Cathclies, reserving to the ecclesiastical authorities the previous performance of the rites and forms usually observed by them in such cases. " A separate part of the common cemetery shall also be assigned for the interment of infants born of Catholic parents and buried before performance of the baptismal rite. ," But no classification of the dead belonging to the same religion—such as, for example, suicides, capital criminals, and the like•—can be admitted, as the separation of burial-places within the general enclosure is made solely with a view to the differences of worship professed by the populations. "And here it is proper to observe that, although the different principles of worship professed by various peoples have taught all civilised nations, ancient and modern, respect and reverence for the dead, yet cemeteries mu 3t not be considered from the religious point of view solely, but also as institutions eminently civil, and it will therefore always be just and expedient that they be properly regulated and governed by the civil authorities.  "M. MINGILETTI, Minister. " Turin, March 31, 1861."