Ordinary Evil

Good Friday 1965

San Martin Citud, Philippines

Amparo Ramos was wearing a snow-white tunic. On her head was a crown of tin. The wooden cross lay on the ground. Amparo, her arms completely extended, lay on top of it. Knotted ropes bound each of her arms to the cross, with long ends extending from each knot to be used to pull the cross upright.
Two men wearing the garb of Roman centurions knelt beside her. One held a stout wooden hammer and two long aluminum nails soaked in alcohol. She smiled at him as he took one of the nails in his left hand and centered it over her right palm. The other man held her hand in place. Amparo and the centurion with the hammer looked into each other’s eyes and she nodded. He acknowledged her, raised the hammer high, and drove it home, pounding the nail through her palm and solidly into the wooden cross.
“The pasyon,” the old priest said, “is the story of the suffering and crucifixion of Christ. His passion. It is so much a part of their local traditions and culture that they must do things like this.”
“God bless you all,” screamed Amparo Ramos as the pain shot through her. She began to breathe deeply and rapidly as the two men knelt by her other hand. Again, one took the second nail, while the other held her left palm in place. She took a deep breath and nodded. The centurion lowered the hammer, driving the nail through her palm.
“I love you, Jesus,” she screamed. “Show us the way.” The two men then began to nail her feet to the cross. When they were done, two more men in white tunics used lengths of rope to bind her hands and feet to the cross.
The crucifixion was taking place in San Martin Citud, a small village north of Manila. It was nearly noon and the high sun was broiling hot as the men prepared to raise Amparo’s cross. The centurions took the long rope ends that extended from the knots binding her arms, while the men in tunics concentrated on the straight beam of her cross. Together, they carefully hoisted the cross with a smiling Amparo nailed to it and brought it to rest securely in a deep posthole in the ground.
“Every person from this village is here,” the old priest said to his young visitor from Rome, “and playing some role in this.”
Within a few minutes, thirteen upright crosses stood in a cluster with Amparo’s at the head. Earlier that day, the thirteen crucified had struggled, bearing their crosses along a tropical via dolorosa through the village, while the hordes watched. On the way, men dressed as Roman soldiers used burrillos … clusters of bamboo fingers tied in two-foot lengths … to whip them, and paddles laced with slivers of broken glass, to rip their flesh.
When they reached their Golgotha, seven of those crucified were tied to their crosses, but the five closest to Amparo, like her, were nailed to theirs. Before them was a group of attendants, some dressed as Roman centurions, others as soldiers. Some women stood by holding large wooden bowls filled with a thick white paste.
“They will use the paste to dress their wounds,” the old priest said. “I blessed it at Mass.”
As her eyes flashed open then shut, Amparo Ramos muttered incoherently. One moment she smiled. The next she was in agony.
“The villagers say she has the power to heal,” the old priest said. “They say she is possessed by the spirit of Jesus Christ.”
“What about the crowd?” The young seminarian had so many questions.
“They believe it,” the old priest said. Of the others crucified, all are Filipino except one. “He is European like you. He came a very long way to suffer so much. It must be terrible the first time.”
The seminarian shuddered. “What do you mean the first time?”
“This is her tenth crucifixion. It is the European’s first. Each year another one or two follow her example. And so it grows.”
“Why do they do it?”
“There are as many answers as those crucified,” the old priest said. “The European told me it would make him finally comprehend how much Jesus suffered. As for the others, perhaps it is a form of prayer. Sometimes a relative is sick so they offer their suffering in hope that Jesus will help their loved one. They each have their reasons and it is not for me to judge them.”
He pointed to the man on Amparo’s left who, unlike the others, bore his agony in silence. “He is a convicted murderer. This is his seventh time. Each year, he is released from the penitentiary for this one day.”
“There’s so much blood.” The visitor could not believe what he was seeing.
“It is all about blood,” said the old priest. “We think we know, but we never really begin to understand the horror until we see it.”
Amparo Ramos was becoming more hysterical. “Pray everyone,” she screamed. “God be with you.”
“And also with you,” roared the crowd of two thousand who were watching. Hearing them, Amparo Ramos began to writhe on the cross. The blood that had thus far dribbled from her wounds began to flow more profusely.
“It is nearly over,” the old priest said. “In a few more minutes, they will be taken down.” He made the sign of the cross. “How does it make you feel?”
Luchino Montefiore was unable to answer. The young seminarian, soon to be ordained a priest, lay unconscious in the dirt. This opportunity, to accompany a group of Vatican diplomats to the Philippines, so carefully arranged for him by his sponsor as a reward for successful completion of his studies in Rome, was not to include this stop.
Unlike the others, content to deal with an abstraction, he had jumped at the chance to come to San Martin Citud to see for himself what his superiors only whispered about. Now he lay bleeding from a nasty gash above his right eye, which happened when his head hit the ground.
The old priest smiled. It was not unusual for strangers, even future priests, to faint when seeing such things. As he knelt to attend to him, Luchino’s right leg twitched involuntarily.