The last rites are the last prayers and ministrations given to many Catholics when possible shortly before death. The last rites go by various names and include different practices in different Catholic traditions. They may be administered to those awaiting execution, mortally injured, or terminally ill.
Read more about Last Rites: In The Roman Catholic Church, In The Orthodox Church
Famous quotes containing the word rites:
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)