A parishioner in West Yorkshire has been allowed to put an inscription in Chinese on a relative’s gravestone. ‘There is no general prohibition on the inclusion in inscriptions on headstones of words or phrases in a language other than English,’ said Mark Hill QC, Chancellor of the Diocese of Leeds, sitting in a consistory court.
If that is so, why was a family of Irish background forbidden by a consistory court in June from putting an Irish inscription on the gravestone in a Nuneaton churchyard of Margaret Keane, who had died aged 73? The inscription would have said: ‘In ár gcroíthe go deo.’ Perhaps not many people in Nuneaton would have known it meant ‘In our hearts for ever’.
In that case, the judge in the ecclesiastical court ruled: ‘There is a sad risk that the phrase would be regarded as some form of slogan, or that its inclusion without translation would, of itself, be seen as a political statement.
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