President's Message

Since very young, and due to very special experiences, I have been preoccupied by the end of a human being’s material existence...death, and how the “living” manipulate the feelings of their relatives to their own benefit, pretending to put a price on the pain, the love, and the dignity of a human being; the embarrassing spectacle of professional weeping women, the unnecessary mutilation by embalming, and the sad truth of cemeteries made me an avid researcher of life’s outcome, a drama in which one day I would also participate.

As a result of this research, I came to the conclusion that cremation is the only dignified and environmentally sound method for the disposal of a body after its course in this life. I concluded that embalming is nothing more than an excuse by the created interests to maintain a lifeless body as center of a social event called a wake, forgetting that a human being’s essence, the spirit, the soul, does not lie down but lives forever, bearer of the Creator’s promise of eternal life. I understood that more attention is put on the container than on the contents, that we were admiring the light not the stars, that love is not shone by flaunting, because money does not open Heaven’s gates, using it wisely on this life can make us more just, but using it unwisely condemns us forever.

The process of a body’s decomposition is a source of contamination that during the XIX century was considered by many health professionals as a crime against humanity, which was the main reason for the development of cremation in Europe and America. This was one of the reasons that influenced me to establish Celestium, to offer others the results of my findings and the basis of my personal philosophy.

Celestium was created in 1987 as an apostolate within cremation, I thought it was fair and worthy for my family and me, I simply made it available to others, a simple service and profoundly spiritual, because in the end, that is what we are...spirit over matter and not matter over spirit.

Carlos E. Rodríguez Pardo
Presidente / Fundador