Loyola Memorial Park gets fewer visitors on All Souls’ Day

Less than 2,000 people went inside the Loyola Memorial Park in Marikina City on Friday morning, All Souls’ Day, the Marikina City police said.

According to the Marikina police, some 1,920 persons visited their departed kin as of 9:00 a.m. On Thursday, police said some 6,200 visitors entered the cemetery at 9 a.m.

Authorities said a lot of visitors prefer to make their cemetery visit on All Saints’ Day, with the crowd swelling up to more than 36,000 at around 7:00 p.m.

Despite the volume of visitors, police said that they have not recorded any major untoward incident, except from the confiscation of flammable items such as lighters, matches and bladed objects, and cigarettes.

There were also fewer cemetery visitors on Friday in the other cemeteries in eastern Metro Manila. Reports from the Eastern Police District said that as of 6 a.m. on Friday, there were only 220 visitors in Pasig cemeteries, 45 in Mandaluyong, 968 in Marikina, and none in San Juan.

On Thursday at 6 a.m. some 495 visitors were already inside cemeteries in Pasig, some 2,335 in Marikina, 183 in Mandaluyong, and 25 in San Juan.  /muf