Nearly 4,000 human remains at the city’s public Catholic cemetery, El Reposo, have yet to be retrieved by their families despite appeals by the local Catholic Church and the city government to transfer them to other burial grounds ahead of the cemetery’s planned rehabilitation.
The city government and the local Catholic Church issued an advisory in 2023 prohibiting further burials at El Reposo to pave the way for its rehabilitation.
City government records showed that more than 12,500 people had been buried at the cemetery. Of this number, over 8,000 remains have already been retrieved and transferred by their families, leaving close to 4,000 at the burial site.
The retrieved remains, mostly bones, were collected, identified, and placed in a common grave to make it easier for families to claim and transfer them to other cemeteries.
Credula Enerlan, who is in charge of the cemetery, said they continued to appeal to families to retrieve the remains of their departed relatives.
Those who had already collected the remains transferred them to the cemetery operated by the Archdiocese of Palo in Palo, Leyte, or to other public and private burial grounds in Tacloban.
Enerlan acknowledged, however, that financial constraints had prevented some families from transferring the remains of their loved ones.
‘Transferring them to other cemeteries can be costly, even if what remains are already bones,’ she said.
She also cited the absence of relatives and the difficulty of locating old burial sites as among the reasons some remains had yet to be claimed.
Some families may no longer know the exact location of their relatives’ graves or may have stopped visiting the cemetery for various reasons, she added.
Earlier this month, several empty graves at El Reposo were affected by a demolition conducted by the city government as part of its road-widening project.
Despite the challenges, Enerlan urged families to visit the cemetery and retrieve the remains of their loved ones whenever they have the means to transfer them to other burial grounds.
During the Undas observance, from Oct. 31 until the morning of Nov. 2, nearly 200 relatives visited El Reposo, where many offered prayers and lit candles at the chapel and designated candle holders.
Among the visitors was a woman whose grandparents and father-in-law were buried at the cemetery.
Rather than visiting their former burial sites, she lit candles and offered prayers for her departed relatives at the chapel.
She expressed hope that the remains of her loved ones were still intact and that her family would eventually have enough money to retrieve and transfer them to another cemetery.