Catholic News Agency portal (January 3, 2026) reports on the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust (KBRT), founded by Colin and Eithne Bell after their son’s 2013 death in New York. The charity has repatriated over 2,000 Irish bodies since its inception, funded through community donations. The article frames this work as fulfilling the corporal work of mercy by “burying the dead” and “comforting the sorrowful,” quoting Colin Bell’s description of their “therapeutic” efforts that allegedly honor their son’s memory. This humanistic narrative exemplifies the neo-church’s abandonment of supernaturalis caritas (supernatural charity) in favor of secularized philanthropy.
Eclipse of Sacramental Reality in Mortuary Practices
The article conspicuously avoids mentioning Requiem Masses, conditional absolutions, or the necessity of sacramental preparation for burial – the very essence of Catholic burial rites. While detailing logistical costs (“£8,000 from Australia”), it omits the sine qua non of proper Catholic funerals: the priestly blessing of remains, recitation of the Office of the Dead, and suffrages for the deceased’s soul. Pius XI’s Quas Primas reminds us that “faithful Christians are more accurately distinguished from unbelievers and those who believe wrongly by the fact that they place the Founder of the Church in control of all their actions” – a principle utterly violated when reducing burial to mere physical repatriation.
Colin Bell’s claim that “Kevin would have known nothing about” his violent death dangerously implies death’s finality, contradicting the Catechism of the Council of Trent which teaches: “The moment of death demands our utmost vigilance, for it is then that the eternal sentence is passed.” The family’s focus on repatriation costs and community fundraising replaces the Church’s emphasis on obtaining in articulo mortis graces and ensuring proper sacramental care for both dying and deceased.
Humanitarian Substitution for Spiritual Works of Mercy
The article’s description of KBRT’s work as “comforting the sorrowful” constitutes theological reductionism. Traditional moral theology distinguishes between natural compassion and spiritual consolation, the latter requiring leading mourners to the Sacraments and resignation to Divine Providence. The Roman Catechism specifies: “The dead are to be buried with the sacred rites and prayers prescribed by the Church…to remind the living of the prayers due to the dead.” By contrast, KBRT operates as a travel agency for corpses, reducing the corporal work of mercy to a logistical operation.
Colin Bell’s assertion that “loss is loss and pain is pain” embodies the naturalism condemned in Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, which rejects the proposition that “the Christian religion is nothing more than a species of true worship which may equally be found in every cult” (Error 21). True Catholic consolation derives not from sentimental gestures like “holding his hand” before burial (as Mrs. Bell did), but from offering Masses and rosaries for the soul’s purification – practices nowhere mentioned in the article.
Syncretic Symbolism Replaces Sacramental Signification
The charity’s bird logo and Kevin’s final gift of a “bird table” reveal a paganized cosmology at odds with Catholic symbolism. While Scripture occasionally uses avian metaphors (“as birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts protect Jerusalem” – Isaiah 31:5), the article elevates the naturalistic image of “birds come home to roost” as their defining motif. This replaces the Anima Christi and Subvenite prayers with ecological sentimentalism, exemplifying the neo-church’s embrace of Teilhardian immanentism.
The claim that KBRT is “the only repatriation organization in the world” ignores centuries of established Catholic societies like the Confraternity of the Most Holy Sacrament, which historically arranged burial transports with priests to administer conditional sacraments. This historical amnesia facilitates the modernist narrative that pre-conciliar Catholicism lacked charitable works – a falsehood demolished by the 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia‘s documentation of 2,784 Catholic charitable institutions in America alone before 1900.
Ommission of Eschatological Warning as Pastoral Failure
Nowhere does the article mention the quattuor novissima (four last things) – death, judgment, heaven, hell – which formed the cornerstone of traditional Irish Catholic funerals. The Roman Ritual‘s burial rite begins with the warning: “I am the resurrection and the life…he that believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live” (John 11:25-26), emphasizing the necessity of dying in grace. KBRT’s exclusive focus on physical repatriation implicitly endorses the heretical notion that burial location matters more than spiritual state, contravening Christ’s warning: “Let the dead bury their dead” (Luke 9:60).
The article’s praise for community fundraising (“£150,000 raised in a week”) displaces emphasis on the communio sanctorum (communion of saints), reducing the Church’s role to that of a Rotary Club. St. Augustine’s City of God distinguishes between earthly communities bound by temporal affections and the heavenly city united in Christ – a distinction obliterated when repatriation becomes an end in itself rather than a means to secure the requiem aeternam (eternal rest).
Source:
A homecoming of mercy: The charity that returns Ireland’s dead (catholicnewsagency.com)
Date: 03.01.2026