World

Good Friday’s Hardest-Core Crucifixion Re-Enactors (Photos)

FINAL HOURS

 

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Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty
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A pilgrim reenacts the crucifixion of Jesus Christ along the path where he once walked, now known as the Via Dolorosa (the Way of Suffering) on Good Friday in Jerusalem’s Old City. Christians mark the event each year by walking from the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the middle of the Old City, an ancient sprawling shrine that Orthodox and Catholic Christians both believe was built on the original site of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

Around the world, devotees on Friday re-created the most solemn moment in Christianity, with actors staging the procession in some places—and in others, real-life nails are driven into palms each year to recapture the suffering of Jesus. Here, a look at some of the most noteworthy.

Thomas Coex/AFP/Getty
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Members of Frankfurt’s Italian community wait to take part in a re-enactment of the crucifixion on Good Friday in Bensheim, southwest of the German city.

Kai Pfaffenbach/Reuters
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Christian faithful take part in a re-enactment of the crucifixion in South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

Reuters
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The Wintershall Players perform The Passion of Jesus in front of crowds in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Jack Taylor/Getty
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A penitent's feet are nailed on a wooden cross during a re-enactment in Cutud, north of Manila in the Philippines. Catholics in the village stage the annual event in which stainless-steel nails are hammered through their hands and feet.

Romeo Ranoco/Reuters
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Lebanese Christians take part in a re-enactment of the crucifixion in the southern village of Qraiyeh.

Mahmoud Zayyat/Reuters
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Penitents from the Cristo Salvador y del Amparo brotherhood stand around an effigy of Christ during a Holy Week procession along the beach in Spain’s Valencia.

Jose Jordan/Getty
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A Philippine man reacts in pain while nailed to a cross during a re-enactment of the crucifixion of Christ during Good Friday celebrations in the village of Cutud near San Fernando, north of Manila. Devotees in the fervently Catholic Philippines are actually nailed to crosses and have their backs whipped in extreme acts of faith that have become an annual tourist attraction.

Noel Celis/AFP/Getty

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