CHURCHES have rejected calls for a Catholic coffining of King Richard III in the latest row over the remains of the controversial monarch found in a council car park.
The Anglican and Catholic Churches said full Christian rites will be observed and academics said "dignity and honour" would be respected, but no specific Catholic preparations of remains for casket requested by the author who discovered the lost king are planned.
Philippa Langley, the Edinburgh-based leader of the Looking for Richard Project which located the last Plantagenent under a car park in Leicester in 2012, set up a petition that attracted more than 3,000 backers for Catholic coffining rites before the re-interment.
The pre-Reformation king will be interred at the Anglican Leicester Cathedral and a Mass will be said at the Holy Cross Priory, Leicester, on March 26.
Fr Andrew Cole, spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Nottingham, and Church of England's Rev Pete Hobson, Canon Missioner, Leicester Cathedral, released a joint statement.
They said: "There is no requirement in the Catholic tradition for prayers to be said at the coffining of human remains, including those of a monarch; the arrangements agreed between the University and the Cathedral have the full support of the Catholic Church, and Cardinal Vincent Nichols will celebrate Mass for Richard III in Holy Cross Priory, Leicester as part of the re-interment ceremonies."
The statement added: "We look forward to everyone who has an interest in the re-interment of Richard III rejoicing that this former monarch of our realm is to be laid to rest in Leicester Cathedral, the mediaeval parish church of the city in which he was first buried in 1485, with dignity and honour, in a manner agreed by both the Anglican and Catholic Churches, and fully consistent with the Christian faith as expressed both in his time and in the present."
A spokesman for Leicester University, which led the Dig for Richard III and where the remains are being kept, said: "The remains will be placed in a coffin in a place of appropriate dignity - and not a lab as suggested - at the University of Leicester by experts involved in the discovery and exhumation of the remains, in the presence of Richard's family descendants as well as representatives from the Church, Richard III Society and independent witnesses."
Mrs Langley said it "seems this former king and head of state is to be treated as a scientific specimen right up to and including the point at which he is laid in his coffin".
A group claiming to be distant relatives of the king was earlier granted a judicial review into the licence that gave Leicester the right to re-inter his remains, but this was dismissed.
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