When I was living in Naples I visited a Poor Clares (as we call them) convent on Ischia in the Bay of Naples. I visited a room there where the dead nuns were placed. When a nun died she wasn't buried but was propped up on a metal stool with a bowl, something like a toilet, in this room. Every afternoon the nuns gathered in the room in the presence of the corpse for a few hours, to meditate on death and the afterlife. The corpse would be left there until it decayed and the bones fell into the bowl.

I found that pretty strange.

BTW, there was a Poor Clares convent near where I live until recently--I wonder whether they had the same tradition...

Don