By: Shelby Sherman
Re: Lest we forget the dumbasses abroad

Crucifixions Mark Good Friday in Philippines
Friday, March 28, 1997 5:10:00 PM EST

   CUTUD, Philippines (Reuter) - Devout Christians had themselves nailed to
wooden crosses while others beat their own backs with whips in a bloody re-
enactment of Jesus Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday nearly 2,000 years ago.

 The event, which has become a tradition in the Philippines, drew large crowds
and vendors in a carnival-like scene that Roman Catholic Church officials
refuse to endorse because of its extreme nature.

 Fifteen penitents, one of them an elderly woman, lay grimacing on wooden
crosses in Cutud San Pedro town, 80 kms (50 miles) north of Manila, as friends
hammered four-inch long nails into their palms.

 Then under the blazing sun the crosses were hoisted up as the 5,000 spectators
looked on.

 Just outside the barricaded mound where the penitents suffered, ice cream and
soft-drink vendors rang their bells in a cacophony to attract thirsty tourists.

 Signboards pointed to Calvary Hill, named after the biblical site where Christ
was crucified in the Holy Land nearly 2,000 years ago.

 ``This way to Calvary,'' said one sign placed just above another board saying:
``Cali Shandy available.''

 ``Anyone trying to inflict such pain on themselves is indeed very strange,''
said Keith Morton, an American management consultant based in Singapore.

 He had come to the Philippines specially to see the crucifixions after he read
about it in a book, he said.

 ``Their faith, their country. They can do what they like,'' said David Cowley,
a retired Briton who stays in a nearby town.

 But to the penitents, all of whom are poor and illiterate, it was their way to
atone for sins and seek divine favours.

 Chito Sangalang, 37, who had played the role of Jesus Christ and was the first
to be crucified, said he made a living selling smoked fish on the sidewalks.

 ``My wife gets nervous but I am not scared,'' he said before the crucifixion.

 His mother and one of his children were ill and his sacifice would help them
recover, he said, showing a bottle of alcohol in which he had dipped the nails
that went through his palms.

 Sangalang shivered, bit his lips and screamed as the spikes were driven into
him.

 He stayed up on the cross for eight minutes.

 ``I don't want to see anymore,'' said an American tourist. ``I looked away
when they were putting the nails into him... Why should they do this.''

 The Catholic Church frowns on the bloody rites that began more than three
decades ago in the Philippines, whose population of 68 million is 85 percent
Catholic.

 Ben Enaje, 36, a signboard painter, said he wanted to be crucified to repay a
debt to God. Nine years ago, he had fallen from the third floor of a building
while doing a painting job and survived without much injury.

 Since then he had offered himself for crucifixion every year and would
continue it until he finished 12 years, he said.

 ``Yes, I am nervous. But it is up to God,'' he said.

 ``I am doing this for the benefit of everybody,'' said 55-year-old Mother
Paring, the only woman to be crucified.

 Meanwhile, dozens of young men with hoods on their faces and crowns of thorns
beat their backs into a bloody pulp with bamboo whips encrusted with glass
shards.

 Police said two people were crucified in nearby towns and and hundreds of
devotees in other parts of the country walked barefoot to religious shrines as
part of their sacrifice.


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