No crucifixion for Pampanga ‘Kristo’ on Good Friday

Ruben Enaje —TONETTE OREJAS

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO—If the admonitions of Catholic Church leaders failed to stop his painful penitence on Good Friday, the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) would keep his Lenten vow at bay for now.

Ruben Enaje, 59, said he would be content carrying a 37-kilo wooden cross and stop being crucified for the 34th time on Good Friday, April 10.

His two pairs of steel nails, soaked in alcohol, are going to remain idle this time.

Enaje agreed to give up the real-life crucifixion rite at the prodding of local officials who kept up with President Duterte’s order to stop the gathering of people in big numbers as a way of preventing the spread of COVID-19.The event, made more dramatic by long lines of bloodied flagellants, draws a minimum of 50,000 pilgrims and spectators to their version of Golgotha at Purok 4 in Barangay San Pedro Cutud here.

Playing Christ“I will just carry the cross from my house to the hill,” he told the Inquirer on Wednesday, referring to a cross, which is 4.5 meters (15 feet) long.Enaje, a house and billboard painter, has always played the part of Jesus Christ (“Kristo”) in the play “Via Crucis” (Way of the Cross) that is staged on the streets of Cutud.

Thanking God

Itinerant faith healer Artemio Anoza began the practice in 1962. The Via Crucis was first staged in 1955.Enaje took to the cross in 1986 as a way of thanking God for surviving a fall from a three-story building in Tarlac province without any scratch or internal bleeding.

After completing a total of 27 years, Enaje extended the sacrifice and felt like it was a welcome burden that he should bear for the “sake of the community.”

He urged visitors to come as “pilgrims,” pointing out that the Cutud crucifixion and street play were not spectacles but “expressions of faith.”

Crucifixion is also practiced in the nearby Barangay Sta. Lucia but the crowd drawer is still Cutud because of Enaje.