On 30 November 2013, the Daughters of St. Paul, in collaboration with their Pauline Cooperators and some lay leaders from our Lady of Fatima Parish, held a Bible mission in Sarhento Mariano Public Cemetery in Pasay City.
Sarhento Mariano is one of the public cemeteries in Metro Manila in which cemetery employees and other people in the area also live. The cemetery’s “living residents” come from different parts of the Philippines and some of them have been residing there since the early 1980’s. As many as three families live in each of the big mausoleums, which they clean and maintain for the wealthy relatives of the dead. Other residents have constructed living quarters between the tombs or in the trees that dot the cemetery grounds.
Under the shade of the big tree that cemetery residents call their “social area,” the FSPs and their collaborators conducted their mission with zeal and enthusiasm. The people were happy to see them and were very eager to get to know about the Bible. After the mission, they went home with smiles on their faces and Bibles in their hands, filled with hope and encouragement in spite of their poverty and lack of a normal place in which to live.
