Belen stops sorties; family mourns death of matriarch
Former Mayor Belen entertaining her mother Doña Remedios in a throwback photo taken in their home in 2018.
FORMER Mayor Belen Fernandez asked residents in the city’s 31 barangays for understanding as she could not continue her campaign sorties because her family is in mourning following the death of their beloved mom, Doña Remedios Tan Vda de Fernandez, on April 9, after a lingering illness. The Fernandez matriarch was 90 years old.
Amid tears and in a low halting voice, Fernandez said that as much as she wants to be with the people whose love and warmth of their support to the Belen-BK team she values, she must stay with the family to mourn the passing of her mother, known to their friends and relatives as “Atchie Mining”.
On July 16, 2021, Doña Remedios was the first Dagupeño to receive the Pro Ecclesias et Pontifice (“For Church and Pope”) medal for her devotion to the Catholic Church. When she was still in the pink of her health, she walked from their home to the church daily without fail to pray.
The Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice is the highest award given by the Catholic Church to a member of the laity. The medal came all the way from the Vatican in Rome at the instance of Pope Francis.
In the earlier days of Catholic Church, the award was originally used to commemorate Pope Leo XIII’s golden sacerdotal jubilee and was awarded to the men and women who aided and promoted the jubilee.
It was former Mayor Fernandez who attended the award conferment ceremony at the St. John Metropolitan Cathedral, in behalf of her mother who was not able to attend due to her poor health. Archbishop Socrates Villegas presented the award to Dona Remedios at their residence.
Atchie Mining was the wife of the late Fernandez patriarch, Jimmy Lim Fernandez. The two were blessed with nine children: Belen Fernandez, Philip Fernandez, Lita Fernandez, Caroline Fernandez, Josephine Fernandez-Seen, Mary Ann Fernandez-Co, Marilyn Fernandez, Sarah Jane Fernandez and Kerwin Fernandez.
The husband and wife, Jimmy and Remedios Fernandez, founded and established the popular City Grocery on then Torres Bugallon Avenue (now A.B. Fernandez Avenue), Dagupan’s main thoroughfare.
Their perseverance, dedication and their devotion to God served as inspiration to their children who later on their own established the CSI Group of Companies that now owns a number of shopping malls, supermarkets, groceries and superstores and became one of the biggest retail outlets not only in Pangasinan but in Ilocos Region, as well as some parts of Central Luzon.
On their mother’s 83rd birthday on May 23, 2015, then Mayor Belen Fernandez said: “Our mother, along with our late father Jimmy Fernandez, served as the foundation of our family. She taught me and my siblings everything we know about life and raised us to become the best that we can be.”
The wake celebrating the life for Dona Remedios Tan Vda de Fernandez was held at the St. John the Evangelist chapel at the Cathedral Compound on Burgos Street in Dagupan City.
The date of the interment will be announced later. (Leonardo Micua)
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