Photos of ‘tourists’ posing with crosses on Good Friday anger Netizens

‘HOLY COW!’ A day after Easter Sunday, netizens are incensed at a photo now going viral on social network sites of a girl who suggestively posed for the camera on the cross. Photo taken on Good Friday by photography enthusiast Maike Domingo in Brgy Lourdes Northwest, Angeles, Pampanga.

MANILA, Philippines—Anger and ridicule among netizens on Monday were targeted against women in skimpy shorts, believed to be tourists, posing with wooden crosses erected during the long Lenten break meant to remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ.

The first to have gone viral has a woman believed to be in her late teens to early 20s posing on a cross as if it’s a tourist item.  The snapshot was attributed to photographer Maike Domingo who posted it on his Facebook account.

The second photo, taken by professional photographer-college professor Jay Javier, has two women on a jump shot with two crosses as background.

Both incidents, as confirmed by Domingo and Javier, happened on Good Friday in Angeles City, Pampanga, which, for years has been the site of various re-enactment of the Crucifixion. Some devotees went as far as having themselves nailed on the cross like Christ as part of their yearly penitence.

'JUMP FOR JOY.' What separates devotees from insensitive tourists is best exemplified by the main subjects in this photo taken by photographer-professor Jay Javier on Good Friday in Angeles, Pampanga. Netizens simply label them 'a thin girl and a fat girl.'

Even Javier was disgusted over the blasphemous acts of these tourists. In his Facebook account, his caption for the jump shot: “Angeles Pampanga. Good Friday 3.30pm. The site of a Passion Play and the reading of the ‘Siete Palabras’. Kailangan talagang gawin ito? Even non-believers will cringe at the sight of this blatant show of disrespect and impropriety.”

While the blatant disrespect of the cross was the common reactions, others relate such sacrilege to another series of viral photos of a young woman riding a dead whale shark or butanding. Others remember last year’s exhibit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, where artist Mideo Cruz’s installation piece had the face of Christ glued with wooden phallic symbols.

There were also references on policemen posing with the damaged tourist bus after the hostage drama in Rizal Park in August, 2010.

The identities of the women in the photos were not yet known as of posting.