Tag Archives: farming village

You just gotta love those nutty Filipinos. Nailing themselves to crosses and getting whipped for their sins. At least 23 people were nailed to crosses in three villages in northern Pampanga province’s San Fernando city to mark Good Friday, with foreigners banned from taking part this year except as spectators, said Ching Pangilinan, a city tourism officer and one of the organizers.

No one knows what these people get out of doing this to themselves. Many gathered at San Pedro Cutud, a farming village where devotees dressed in robes and tin crowns walked to a dusty mound carrying wooden crosses on their backs. At the mound, men nailed their hands and feet to the crosses.

Among the devotees was Ruben Enaje, a 49-year-old sign painter who was nailed to a cross for the 24th time as his way of thanking God for his survival after falling from a building.

Mary Jane Mamangon, a 34-year-old rice cake vendor, was the lone female devotee to be nailed to a cross this year in San Juan village. It was her 14th time.

She said she started when she was 18 and has taken part in the annual rites on and off to seek God’s help in saving her ill grandmother and now her younger sister, who is suffering from cancer.

“I do it because I have seen that it works,” she told The Associated Press. “I saw how my grandmother recovered from her illness.”

Most wouldn’t say this, but we here at the brokencountry like to make a mockery of this ridiculous tradition. These people are idiots. Even Catholic church leaders reject such practices. The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said the real expression of Christian faith during Lent is through repentance and self-renewal, not flagellation or crucifixion.