Fr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Amos
Ever since the Catholic Archdiocese of Benin City announced that the Funeral Mass of its late Metropolitan Archbishop, Most Rev. Dr. Augustine Obiora Akubeze, will be celebrated at St. Paul Catholic Church, Airport Road, on August 13, one question has continued to resonate among clergy and laity alike: Will Archbishop Akubeze now be buried outside Holy Cross Cathedral?
From the standpoint of Catholic tradition, liturgical practice and canon law, the answer is almost certainly no.
Although the Code of Canon Law does not prescribe a cathedral as the mandatory burial place of every diocesan bishop, it recognizes the diocesan bishop’s authority over sacred places (Canon 1213) and the Church’s ancient discipline regarding ecclesiastical burial (Canons 1176–1185). More specifically, Canon 1242 expressly provides an exception permitting the burial of diocesan bishops, including emeriti, in their own churches. Complementing canon law, the Ceremonial of Bishops (Caeremoniale Episcoporum, nos. 826–874) presents the cathedral as the ordinary setting for the bishop’s principal liturgical acts because it houses the cathedra, the bishop’s chair from which he teaches, sanctifies and governs the local Church. It is for this deep theological reason, rather than a rigid juridical obligation, that bishops throughout the Catholic world have traditionally been interred in or beneath their cathedrals.
The Archdiocese of Benin City itself offers a recent, historic precedent. On August 22, 2024, Archbishop Emeritus Patrick Ebosele Ekpu, who died on the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord on August 6, 2024, was laid to rest in the episcopal crypt of Holy Cross Cathedral, becoming the first archbishop to be interred within the Cathedral precinct. His funeral liturgies drew an unprecedented gathering, offering a clear glimpse of the immense logistical demands that accompany the final rites of a revered shepherd.
Archbishop Akubeze’s funeral, however, is expected to attract an even larger congregation. Unlike Archbishop Ekpu, who had retired from active governance in 2006, Archbishop Akubeze died while actively holding office as the Metropolitan Archbishop of Benin City. His national stature as a two-term President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Nigeria from 2018 to 2022, alongside his global ecclesial engagements, is expected to bring cardinals, archbishops, bishops, hundreds of priests, diplomats, high-ranking government officials and tens of thousands of the faithful from across Nigeria and abroad.
The choice of St. Paul Catholic Church on Airport Road for the Funeral Mass reflects pastoral prudence and spatial reality rather than a departure from tradition. With its sprawling parish grounds, expansive seating, multi-lane vehicular access and high-capacity parking facilities, St. Paul is vastly better equipped to handle the logistical demands of a state-level ecclesial gathering than the constrained, historic precinct of Holy Cross Cathedral on Mission Road.
Global Catholic history offers striking parallels where the venue for a shepherd’s public Funeral Mass was separated from his final place of rest specifically to accommodate massive crowds. When Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated in El Salvador in 1980, an estimated 250,000 mourners gathered for his funeral, forcing the Requiem Mass onto the expansive Plaza Barrios before his body was laid to rest in the crypt of the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador. Likewise, several bishops and archbishops in Europe and Latin America have had their principal funeral liturgies celebrated in larger churches or public squares when their cathedrals could not safely accommodate the faithful, while their interment took place in their cathedral crypts or designated episcopal burial places. The distinction has always been pastoral rather than theological.
This same principle is reflected in the funeral of Pope St. John Paul II. In April 2005, more than three million pilgrims converged on Rome, making it impossible to celebrate the Funeral Mass inside St. Peter’s Basilica. The liturgy was therefore held in St. Peter’s Square, after which the Pope’s mortal remains were borne into the Vatican Grottoes beneath the Basilica for interment. In every case, the Church maintained a clear distinction between the pastoral space required to host a vast gathering and the sacred sanctuary reserved for the bishop’s or pope’s final earthly repose.
If this same pattern is followed in Benin City on August 13, it will not represent an anomaly or a breach of protocol. Rather, it will stand as a continuation of a venerable, centuries-old ecclesiastical tradition: the Funeral Mass celebrated where the maximum number of God’s people can gather safely, and the interment taking place at Holy Cross Cathedral, where Archbishop Akubeze’s pastoral ministry found its visible and sacramental centre.
Until the Archdiocese officially releases the precise ceremonial order of interment, any conclusion remains strictly provisional. Yet history, canon law and liturgical practice all point in the same direction.
For now, the Church in Benin City and across Nigeria continues to pray for the repose of Archbishop Akubeze’s soul. Meanwhile, the attention of journalists and Church observers is steadily turning to what promises to be one of the most significant ecclesiastical gatherings in contemporary Nigerian Catholic history: who will preside over the Funeral Mass, which cardinals, archbishops and bishops from Nigeria, Africa and beyond will attend, and how the universal Church will bid farewell to a Metropolitan Archbishop who died while still actively bearing the pastoral staff of the historic See of Benin City.
Fr. Dr. Okhueleigbe Osemhantie Amos
Priest of the Catholic Diocese of Uromi, Edo State, and Lecturer at the Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
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