Last year’s scenes on Good Friday in Pampanga. PHOTO BY RIC GONZALES
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – The province of Pampanga has remained a popular destination in Central Luzon over the years during the Holy Week, which starts on Palm Sunday.
For the past 50 years, residents of this Roman Catholic-dominated province have been following a Lenten tradition that reaches its climax on Good Friday.
“We do not condemn it. But we do not approve of it,” said Pampanga Archbishop Paciano Aniceto, when asked by Punto Central Luzon to comment on the flagellations and other penitential rites of Catholics that usually start on Holy Wednesday.
“There are other ways to offer sacrifice and penitence, but not that way,” Aniceto added.
The most common sights are processions of penitents, representing Christ,and carrying wooden crosses with their faces covered with a piece of cloth.
The penitents are usually accompanied by a group of people, in some cases dressed like Roman soldiers during the time of Christ.
When the penitents stop to pray in the chapels along the way of the procession, the “soldiers” hit them with belts or pieces of wood, the way the Roman soldiers beat up Christ with the handle of their spears or with whatever they have in their hands.
Others do the palaspas—or flagellations. This is not for the fainthearted— those who faint at the sight of blood—because the flagellants really get bloodied when they start hitting their backs with their sharp whips.
“Then the flagellants whip themselves or are whipped by a companion until their back muscles swell. This is to numb the pain and speed up the bleeding when incisions are made on their backs with a razor blade or broken glass embedded on a small wooden paddle,” said a blogger after a visit to Magalang, Pampanga, in one recent Holy Week rite.
Some simply walk and crawl on the road under the heat of the sun called salibatbat in the Pampango dialect.
Flagellations and other forms of penitence are still “popular” in Pampanga since it first started in the late 1940s.
SAN PEDRO CUTUD
Archbishop Aniceto is the highest ranking Roman Catholic leader in this city that attracts local and foreign tourists on Good Fridays. All roads lead to Barangay San Pedro Cutud on that day.
Last year at least 10 people joined painter Ruben Enaje of this city in the re-enactment of the crucifixion of Christ.
This coming Good Friday, April 6, Enaje will again be nailed to the wooden cross; it will be his 26th “nailing.”
“After Good Friday next year, my 27th nailing, I will stop,” said Enaje in Pampango.
Mayor Oscar Rodriguez appointed Councilor Jimmy Lazatin as chairman of the 2012 “Maleldo” (crucifixion rites) committee.
According to the City of San Fernando Tourism Office, the re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion that is practiced here each year started in 1955, when Christ’s journey to Golgotha, or the “Via Crucis” (Way of the Cross), was first staged.
But it was only in 1962 when San Pedro Cutud residents had witnessed a person being nailed on the cross. He
was Artemio Anoza, a native of Apalit town.
Anoza, whom people here called “a quack doctor,” reportedly dreamt of being a religious leader and full-fledged healer. He thus volunteered to be “crucified.”
It is not known how many times Anoza repeated his “sacrifice” but many others followed his footsteps.
Enaje told us why he decided to be nailed to the cross for the first time more than 25 years ago, when he was only 26 years old.
Enaje said he was with a group of construction workers when he accidentally fell from the third floor of the building they were constructing. To his surprise, he survived without a scratch.
“I think it was a miracle. I only remembered blurting the words, ‘Oh, my God,’ just after I fell,” Enaje said. “Out of gratitude to the Lord, I decided to be nailed to the cross like Him every Good Friday,” he said in Pampango.
But he added he only learned recently that to suffer like Jesus by being nailed to the cross is not mentioned in the Holy Bible. “Had I been told about it earlier, I would not have done it,” he added.
Enaje also said he had been asked by Archbishop Aniceto to end his panata— or vow of sacrifice—and for good.
“Apu Ceto [Bishop Aniceto] also asked me to advise others not to follow in my or Anoza’s footsteps anymore,” he said.
In at least two other places in this province—Sta. Lucia in this city and Pampang in Angeles City—two groups of penitents also do the Way of the Cross; one of the members is also eventually nailed to the cross on Good Friday.
VOW TO SACRIFICE
Alice Soriano, who works in a spa in Balibago, Angeles City, said two of his three brothers join hundreds of penitents during Holy Week in the past years. She said one of them was doing the “sacrifice” to back up his prayer for good health.
“My third brother has not joined because he is gay,” Soriano said.
Lito Reyes, a former electric cooperative board director based in Mabalacat town, said he had started to carry a cross on Maundy Thursdays for fun and curiosity. “But in later years, I became serious about it, even prayerful,” he said, adding that he has been doing the “sacrifice for the past seven years.”
More than 10 years ago, the Catholic Church asked the faithful here to stop reading the Passion of Christ— Pasion in Capampangan—after Holy Wednesday so that they can focus on praying to God and offering sacrifices, such as fasting on the remaining days of the Holy Week.
Observers said the Church’s order was apparently intended to minimize the number of penitents and flagellants who use the chapels where the elderly usually chant the Pasion to stop for a moment to pray and rest.
The order, however, has remained largely unheeded, as many still hurt themselves literally to pursue their vow of sacrifice. And for as long as they persist, the Holy Week in Pampanga will remain “bloodily colorful.”
