A French mayor has been accused of being racist and inhumane after a two-month-old Roma baby who died at Christmas was refused permission to be buried in a local cemetery.

Christian Leclerc – mayor of Champlan, near Paris’s Orly airport – was quoted as saying there were not enough places in the graveyard and that priority had to be given to “those who pay their local taxes”.

The rightwing mayor’s decision caused a wave of opprobrium from politicians, officials and support groups who accused him of racism and xenophobia.

The infant, named Maria Francesca and born on 14 October 2014, was reported to have died during the night between Christmas Day and 26 December. Her mother was said to have raised the alarm after discovering the child’s body was cold and lifeless when she went to breastfeed her at 5am.

After medics confirmed the death, the parents asked undertakers to request permission to bury the baby in the cemetery at Champlan, which was denied. Maria Francesca was eventually buried on 31 December in a church at Wissous about 4 miles (7km) away. Richard Trinquier, the Wissous mayor, who represents the opposition centre-right UMP party, said he had given permission for the burial out of “human concern”.

“We couldn’t let the situation go on. Here is a mother who has carried a baby for nine months and has lost it at two and a half months; we aren’t here to make her pain worse,” he told BFMTV.

He described the refusal by Leclerc, who represents the Divers Droite (DVD) party – a collection of centre-right politicians not affiliated to any official party – as incomprehensible.

Loïc Gandais, president of the local Roma and Romanian support association (ASEFRR) said Maria Francesca’s family, which lived in a camp at Champlan without electricity, water or refuse collection for more than eight years, was a victim of “racism, xenophobia and stigmatisation”.

His organisation, he said, would pay all funeral charges and described Leclerc’s refusal as “morally reprehensible … but difficult to contest legally”.

Under French law, the family of a deceased person must ask for permission to bury them from the mayor of their chosen cemetery. A person can be buried in the place where they live, where they died, or where there is a family grave. In other cases, the mayor can refuse permission.

Campaigners said the parents had asked for the child to be buried at Champlan as it was near to their camp and where their other children, two boys aged five and nine, went to school.

Jacques Toubon, France’s official defender of rights, a constitutional ombudsman appointed to defend citizens’ – and particularly children’s – rights told France Inter radio: “On a human level I am deeply disturbed, stupefied by this act.”

Other politicians also expressed their outrage at Leclerc’s action.

Laurence Rossignol, secretary of state for the family, tweeted: “To lose a baby is a universal sorrow. To be refused a grave is an inhumane humiliation”.

Leclerc, who French media said was refusing to comment, spoke for the first time on Sunday since the row sparked wider outrage to say his earlier words to Le Parisien newspaper – to the effect that priority for places in the cemetery should be given to locals who paid their taxes – had been taken out of context by the journalist.

He told AFP that he was on holiday at the time the burial request was made by the funeral directors, but was contacted by a female member of town hall staff who passed on the request and who he blamed for the so-called misunderstanding.

The row erupted as another Roma baby, a girl aged three months, died in the arms of its mother who was begging at Lille station on 1 January. The local prefect has ordered the opening of a legal inquiry into the infant’s death.

“According to the first information we have, the baby was in its mother’s arms while she was begging,” he said in a statement.

He added that the family had arrived in the Lille area only recently and had two other children aged three and five. According to the local paper the baby showed no signs of hypothermia.