Gerard Fernandez (born 1938) is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

religious sister A religious sister (abbreviated: Sr.) in the Catholic Church is a woman who has taken public vows in a religious institute dedicated to apostolic works, as distinguished from a nun who lives a cloistered monastic life dedicated to prayer and ...

who is best known for her work as a death row counsellor in

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

. In her more than 40 years of work, she worked with 18 inmates on

death row Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting executio ...

, some of the most notable of whom were Catherine Tan Mui Choo and Hoe Kah Hong, the women accomplices of

Adrian Lim The Toa Payoh ritual murders took place in Singapore in 1981. On 25 January, the body of a nine-year-old girl was found at a block of public housing Public housing in Singapore, flats in the town of Toa Payoh, and two weeks later, the body ...

in the murders of two children, and Filipina double murderer Flor Contemplacion.

Career

She said that at the age of six her father had her recite a verse "And I commit you to Sing Sing Prison, there to be hanged, drawn and quartered" as an enunciation drill. Shocked, she recited a prayer instead. At the age of 18, she joined the

Good Shepherd Sisters The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, also known as the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, is a Catholic religious order that was founded in 1835 by Mary Euphrasia Pelletier in Angers, France. The religious sisters belong to a ...

, a Roman Catholic order of nuns, at their

convent A convent is an enclosed community of monks, nuns, friars or religious sisters. Alternatively, ''convent'' means the building used by the community. The term is particularly used in the Catholic Church, Lutheran churches, and the Anglican ...

in Marymount. Sister Gerard undertook teacher training and taught primary school pupils at the convent from 1959 to 1962, and thereafter went on a mission to

Jakarta Jakarta (; , Betawi language, Betawi: ''Jakartè''), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (; ''DKI Jakarta'') and formerly known as Batavia, Dutch East Indies, Batavia until 1949, is the capital and largest city of Indonesia and ...

for four years to work with troubled teenagers. She returned to Jakarta for another mission in 1972, then on her return to Singapore three years later she founded the Roman Catholic Prison Ministry and began counselling incarcerated drug offenders. Through this work Sister Gerard offered counselling to convicts on death row, and over the next few decades she accompanied 18 condemned prisoners on their final walk to the execution chamber.

Media

In 2018 the short film ''Sister'' by film-maker

Chai Yee Wei Chai Yee Wei (born 21 June 1976) is a Singaporean film director, writer and producer. He is also the founder of Mocha Chai Laboratories and A Little Seed, an authorised Apple Inc., Apple iTunes aggregator. He also founded production company Hot ...

showed Sister Gerard and her counselling of Catherine Tan Mui Choo and Hoe Kah Hong before their deaths. In May 2019, Gerard gave a two-hour oral history interview to the

Singapore Academy of Law The Singapore Academy of Law (SAL) is a promotion and development agency for Singapore's legal industry. SAL also undertakes statutory functions such as stakeholding services and the appointment of Senior Counsel, Commissioners for Oaths and No ...

, where she talked about her own life and also about the various condemned inmates she counselled while they were on

Changi Prison Changi Prison Complex, often known simply as Changi Prison, is a prison complex in the namesake district of Changi in the eastern part of Singapore. It is the oldest and largest prison in the country, covering an area of about . Opened in 193 ...

. In the recordings she also described the final moments of prisoners such as Flor Contemplacion and

Van Tuong Nguyen Van Tuong Nguyen (Vietnamese: ''Nguyễn Tường Vân'', ; 17 August 1980 – 2 December 2005), baptised Caleb, was an Australian from Melbourne, Victoria convicted of drug trafficking in Singapore. A Vietnamese Australian, he was also add ...

as she walked with them to the

gallows A gallows (or less precisely scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sa ...

on the morning of their executions.

Awards

She is the first Singaporean woman to be included in the BBC's 2019 list of ''100 Women'', the most inspiring women across the globe.

References

External links

A Letter With the Sacred Heart of Jesus
- 2023 Vocare documentary regarding Sister Gerard Fernandez (YouTube)
FERNANDEZ, Gerard (Sister) Development of Singapore's Legal System
- 2019 oral history interview with Sister Gerard Fernandez for the Singapore Academy of Law
'Sister' by Chai Yee Wei
- short film regarding Sister Gerard Fernandez and her counselling of Catherine Tan Mui Choo and Hoe Kah Hong before their executions (YouTube) {{DEFAULTSORT:Fernandez, Gerard Singaporean Roman Catholic religious sisters and nuns Living people 1938 births Singaporean people of Indian descent