44-yr-old law giving free burial for poor exhumed

ANGELES CITY—Poor folk in this city finally received guarantees of a decent burial after local officials and Church leaders found copies of a 44-year-old ordinance and an almost century-old land donation that make burying the poor a local government obligation.

The Private Memorial Park Type Cemetery Ordinance of 1968 gave the city government the legal basis to ask private cemeteries to allot 5 percent of their land for charity burial, Mayor Edgardo Pamintuan said on Saturday.

His staffers managed to retrieve a copy of the ordinance late last year.

Pamintuan learned about it in 1988 when he was vice mayor, from his father Alberto, who served as vice mayor to then Mayor Eugenio Suarez.

The first private cemetery to comply with the ordinance was Holy Mary Memorial Park.

Robin Nepomuceno, representing the family that owns the memorial park, signed a memorandum of agreement with the city government in rites witnessed by Pampanga Auxiliary Bishop Pablo Virgilio David and city social welfare chief Heidi Patio on Wednesday.

The Nepomucenos agreed to provide lots for some 200 concrete apartment-like niches, which will be built by the city government through a subsidy along standards set by the Department of Health.

Holy Rosary Parish, on the other hand, has taken over the management of   Cutcut Cemetery after the bishop established that it was a Catholic cemetery and not a public burial ground.

It turned out that the Nepomuceno family donated the 2-hectare Cutcut Cemetery to the Archdiocese of Manila, which has jurisdiction over Pampanga until 1948.

The donation was made during the term of Manila Archbishop Michael O’Doherty between 1916 and 1949, David said.

According to the bishop, the renaming of the place to Holy Rosary Catholic Cemetery has prompted village officials to seek a name change for Cutcut, too. The word means “bury” in Kapampangan.

He said the parish was temporarily closing Cutcut Cemetery for repairs. At the height of monsoon rains last August,

72 tombs piled atop an eight-story niche collapsed.

The city government will help build a brick wall around the cemetery, Pamintuan said.  Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon