On Friday, over a hundred people watched on as 10 devotees were nailed to wooden crosses.

A Filipino villager has been nailed to a wooden cross for the 35th time to reenact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a brutal Good Friday tradition he said he would devote to pray for peace in Ukraine, Gaza and the disputed South China Sea.

On Friday, over a hundred people watched on as 10 devotees were nailed to wooden crosses, among them Ruben Enaje, a 63-year-old carpenter and sign painter. The real-life crucifixions have become an annual religious spectacle that draws tourists in three rural communities in Pampanga province, north of Manila.

The gory ritual resumed last year after a three-year pause due to the coronavirus pandemic. It has turned Enaje into a village celebrity for his role as the “Christ” in the Lenten reenactment of the Way of the Cross.

Ahead of the crucifixions, Enaje told The Associated Press by telephone Thursday night that he has considered ending his annual religious penitence due to his age, but said he could not turn down requests from villagers for him to pray for sick relatives and all other kinds of maladies.

  • tygerprints
    5•9 months ago

    What a sick idea that we should celebrate a human being nailed to a cross, yuck. Another example of how religious beliefs are grotesque in the extreme and I’d rather believe in humanity instead of some supernatural shit like this.

    There was no such person as Jesus and there never has been and there never as any such thing as “god” either. Stop being ignorant blind fools, people. Leave your shackles of religious nut-jobbery behind, go out and enjoy life and have some fun. Turn this “good Friday” into a GREAT Friday.

    • @[email protected]English
      6•9 months ago

      I think Jesus probably did exist, and he was probably a very successful cult leader who may have taken a lot of hallucinogens.

      • tygerprints
        1•9 months ago

        Well it’s sort of like Mohammed - I’m sure that a person with that name DID exist around that time at some point. And maybe they were a teacher and a self-proclaimed “speaker for god.” But so was Charles Manson and David Koresh and Jim Jones and Joseph Smith and many other horrible cult leaders.

        There never has been any “god” in the way we mean it, so there could never actually be such a thing as the son of God, nor any need for one. If we were smart as a species, we’d see why it’s more important to support human beings than go around believing in religious nut jobbery.

        • @afraid_of_zombiesEnglish
          0•9 months ago

          Mohammed is not fully comparable. His life was on the outskirts of most of civilization meaning we should expect bad record keeping. Jesus was right in Jerusalem a major city in a major empire that documented stuff. We should expect that they would have records and that the records would have preserved since Christians controlled said records. Exactly what we do see. We have an abundance of records about the man from 2 centuries later. Nearly all Empire writings are missing from that time and yet Jesus is found repeatedly. If there were a letter talking about him or a court record or a particular landmark, and this guy really existed, we should have it. Which we don’t.

          Where is the Kaaba of Jesus? Where is the tomb he was in? Where was he executed exactly? Where are all the relics of what he touched? History can’t say anymore than history can tell you the first time Batman threw a Batarang.

          Now it is possible a man named Jesus son of Joseph existed in those years in that area. Just like it is possible someone named Bruce Wayne existed in NYC in 1939. That doesn’t mean this possible person was the minimum historical Jesus. That would still have to be demonstrated.

      • @afraid_of_zombiesEnglish
        0•9 months ago

        I don’t think he existed and there just isn’t evidence that the mushroom thing was going on in that time and place. No traces of it have been found and no writings or art mentions it.

    • @NOT_RICKEnglish
      5•9 months ago

      Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

      -Tacitus

      • @afraid_of_zombiesEnglish
        -1•9 months ago

        Hearsay written a century after the supposed events. Gets Pilatus’s rank incorrect indicating he was repeating stories not consulting records.

        Proof that stories are circulating aren’t proof that the stories happened. I am sure your parent’s Facebook feed is full of Covid vaccines stories.