ANGELES CITY – Just in time for All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1, this city’s poor are assured of cemetery for their dead in a posh memorial park after Catholic church authorities announced the pending closure of the already overcrowded Catholic cemetery in Barangay Cutcut here.
Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan said the local government has signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the privately owned Holy Mary Memorial Park here for the provision of 200 concrete apartment-type niches for this city’s poor.
The memorial park is owned by prominent businessman Robin Nepomuceno.
This is while the city government is finalizing plans for this city’s first public cemetery in a donated land in Barangay Sapalibutad.
“It will not just be a place for burial but a peaceful park where we will also have a crematorium,” Pamintuan said.
The signing of the MOA for the allocation of space for the poor at the Holy Mary Memorial Park was witnessed by San Fernando Auxiliary Bishop and Holy Rosary Parish Priest Pablo Virgilio David who had earlier announced the closure of the Catholic cemetery which had been wrongly perceived by the local poor as a public cemetery.
David said the Catholic cemetery would finally be closed as soon as the niches at Holy Mary are available.
Under the agreement, the city government will subsidize the construction of the niches which would be available for use soon after their completion.
The proposed cemetery in Sapalibutad would be Angeles’s first public cemetery for the poor since it was founded by the Spaniards 183 years ago as Pueblo de los Angeles.
Pamintuan lauded Nepomuceno for providing space at the latter’s memorial park in accordance with a 44-year old local law mandating private cemeteries to allocate space for the poor.
