At least 12 Filipinos were nailed to crosses to re-enact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a gory Good Friday tradition that is rejected by the Catholic Church, but draws huge crowds of devotees and tourists to the Philippines, an Asian bastion of Christianity.
The participants were nailed to wooden crosses while others whipped their backs bloody and raw in gruesome displays of religious devotion.
While most people in the religious, Catholic-majority country spend the day at Mass or with their families, some go to extreme lengths to atone for sins or seek divine intervention in rituals.
Photo: REUTERS
In San Juan village, north of Manila, hundreds of residents and tourists watched a blood-soaked re-enactment of Jesus Christ’s last moments.
Dozens of men wearing crowns made out of vines and cloth over their faces walked barefoot through narrow streets, flogging themselves with bamboo whips.
Blood ran down their backs, soaking the tops of their trousers and splattering spectators crowded in front of shops and houses.
Some flagellants stopped to prostrate on the ground so they could be beaten with flip-flops and pieces of wood. When blood stopped oozing from their wounds, their skin was punctured with razor blades or a wooden mallet embedded with glass shards to make them bleed.
“I do it for my family to make them healthy,” Daren Pascual said, after whipping his back in a warm-up for the main event.
“You just pray, then you cannot feel the pain,” he said.
In the final stage of the performance, three men were escorted by costumed Roman centurions to a dirt mound where two of them were tied to wooden crosses.
Wilfredo Salvador, a small and wiry former fisherman who played the role of Jesus Christ, had nails driven through his palms and feet as drones flew overhead and tourists took photos and videos with their smartphones.
After several minutes, the nails were pulled out and Salvador was lowered to the ground. He was carted off on a stretcher to the medical tent for a check-up — before going home in a tricycle taxi.
“He [God] gives me physical strength unlike others who cannot bear it,” said Salvador, 66, who began taking part in the crucifixion 15 years ago after suffering a mental breakdown.
“I do this by choice. I thank him [God] for giving me a second life,” he said.
Church leaders in the Philippines have said Filipinos can show their deep faith and religious devotion without hurting themselves and by doing charity work instead, such as donating blood.
Robert Reyes, a prominent Catholic priest and human rights activist in the country, said the bloody rites reflect the church’s failure to educate many Filipinos on Christian tenets.
Additional reporting by AP
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