Affordable Caskets

Photo: WDIO Associated Press Updated: July 14, 2018 11:32 AM HIBBING, Minn. (AP) - A former priest is building pine caskets and urns in a century-old church in Minnesota with a goal of making funerals more affordable.    KARE-TV reports that Mark Coen's company, Simple Pine Box, sells handmade caskets for $650. He also sells handmade urns for $125.    Coen learned how to create the caskets by studying YouTube videos. He spends between 20-30 hours a week on each casket at Hibbing's Grace Lutheran church, where he also lives.    Coen says his father's funeral showed him the need, after his family was charged $1,000 just to rent a casket prior to cremation.    Coen left priesthood after feeling stressed and isolated. Cohen says he's found another calling and doesn't regret being a priest for two decades or his decision to leave. ...

C;What is happening is medieval. People are ‘renting’ caskets for a service, but giving them back. The same casket is being used over and over again because people cannot afford to buy one,” Venezuelan opposition leader Julio Borges, who has been living in exile in the Colombian capital of Bogota for the past nine months, told Fox News. “And then they have to wrap the body in plastic bags for the burial. Others don’t have money for a land plot, so they are burying loved ones in their back garden.”Borges said the “really creepy” problem of how to properly bury the dead has become the norm rather than the exception. Other Venezuelans concurred, indicating the use of “common graves,” along with backyard burials, was becoming standard.One Venezuelan, who asked his name not be published, described the sudden death of his father in the capital Caracas last week, which left the family without a vehicle to take the body to the morgue. It took more than a day for the body to be collected. Atilio Gonzalez (C), a priest of the Southern Cemetery for the last 24 years, prays during a burial ceremony at the Southern Cemetery in Caracas January 28, 2014. Since then, proper burials have become too expensive for the vast majority of the population. And even then, the family had to say their goodbyes – they had no money for a funeral, or burial – praying the body would be disposed of in some kind of mass cremation.For every day a body remains in the morgue, the cost rises, leaving families without the means for collection. In such cases, loved ones are simply left stranded – their relatives in mourning, not knowing what to do, and without closure.“Funeral services are too expensive. Coffins are expensive, as well as paying for a place in the cemetery and everything that comes with it: the chapel for the service, the plate,” Julett Pineda, a health jour...