THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Bristol has refused to grant a faculty permitting the exhumation of part of the cremated remains of Jaseps Lipskis, who died in 1995, so that they could be reburied in Latvia, where he was born.

Mr Lipskis was buried in consecrated ground in the cemetery at St Margaret’s, in the parish of Stratton St Margaret, in Swindon, Wiltshire. In May this year, his wife, Elaine Lipskis, died, and a portion of her cremated remains were interred in the plot with her husband’s remains; so the grave was currently open.

The petitioner, Sandra Kelly, is their daughter, and she wishes to exhume a portion of her father’s cremated remains so that she can reinter them in Latvia, along with the portion that she has kept of her mother’s cremated remains.

Mrs Kelly told the court that her father was a young man when war broke out, and that he was forced to fight for his country’s enemy. He was captured and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.

After the war, Russia was occupying Latvia, and Mr Lipskis and his fellow countrymen were not allowed to return. His daughter said that all Latvians living outside Latvia were banned from returning or communicating with family in Latvia. She said that Mr Lipskis had communicated with his father, but, when that was discovered, his father was sent to Siberia, and they were never in contact again. Mr Lipskis had been unable to visit Latvia again until 1991, after Latvia had gained independence from Russia.

In reply to questions from the court, Mrs Kelly said that her father was a non-practising Roman Catholic, that the Stratton St Margaret cemetery was the nearest one to where her parents lived, and that the family were not aware of the Church’s views on permanent interment of remains. She said that she had not got a permanent resting place in Latvia for her parents’ ashes because she was awaiting the outcome of her petition.

The Chancellor, the Revd and Worshipful Justin Gau, said that “burial within a churchyard or other consecrated ground under the rites of the Church of England should be regarded as permanent — a final resting place . . . because it is symbolic of entrusting that person to God for resurrection.” Departure from that approach would be permitted only in exceptional circumstances. A petitioner for an exhumation had to satisfy the consistory court that there were special circumstances which justified the making of an exception from the norm that Christian burial in consecrated ground was final.

There appeared to have been no discussion with the late Mr Lipskis about being interred in Latvia, nor about being interred with his wife. The Chancellor said that, from the answers that he had been given, Mr Lipskis “may well have had ambivalent feelings about Latvia”.

Mr Lipskis died in 1995, and, while his wife’s death had clearly triggered the petition, there appeared to have been no enquiries made at any time before that. The Chancellor also noted that there was, in fact, no desire to create a family grave, but to create two “family graves”.

The decisive matter, the Chancellor said, was that there had been no effort made to find a suitable resting place. “Exhuming part of someone’s remains on the basis that they are to be re-interred in an unknown destination appears to flatly contradict the idea of the norm of Christian burial being final,” he said, and there were no exceptional circumstances for allowing the petition.