Pele’s last wish was to choose the ninth floor of a cemetery in his beloved home city of Santos for his final resting place.
It is a special poignant homage to his dear dad who always wore the Number 9 shirt as a player. As I turned from where Pele’s coffin will lay forever I could clearly see the iconic Santos stadium barely half a mile away.
His devoted fans believe that Pele will always be able to “see” his favourite football pitch for eternity.
The Brazilian star who is the only man in history to have won three World cups spent a lot of time selecting his final ‘burial’ spot.
In a post, “Pele’s Final Rest House,” Sola Fanawopo, wrote that back in 2003, Pele expressed his desire for his remains to rest at the Memorial Necropole Ecumenica Cemetery, one which is located less than a kilometre away from Santos’ Vila Belmiro Stadium.
The private ceremony will be attended by just Pele’s family and his remains will occupy the ninth floor of a vertical cemetery as a tribute to his father, who wore no.9 during his professional career as a footballer.”
The Memorial Necrópole Ecumênica is a Brazilian cemetery. Located in Santos, in the State of São Paulo, its construction, according to the article, “The World’s Tallest Cemetery”, published in Atlas Obscura on 14 September 2021, started in 1983 and the first burial was on 28 July 1984.
As contained in the article, “Closer to heaven: Brazil’s high rise cemetery” published in Hindustan Times on 18 November 2010, the cemetery is 32 stories high and occupies a total of 1.8 hectares of land and contains about 16,000 graves.
It received the Guinness World Records title for the tallest cemetery in the World.
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