Jesus for a Night

And He bearing His cross went forth . . .

--St. John 19:17

Promptly at 9:30 p.m. on Good Friday last week, a grotesque lump of a man emerged from the medieval Roman Catholic church in Corsica's olive-growing village of Sartene. Barefoot, masked in a blood-red hood with eye slits, the bent figure staggered under the weight of a massive oak cross. From his right ankle dragged a clanking, 31-lb. chain. And from under the hood came an anguished, muffled chant: "Perdonno, mio dio . . . Perdonno . . ."

Thus, as it has every spring since the Middle Ages, began one of the world's most brutally powerful Easter Week processions. The hooded figure was that of a conscience-stricken French sinner whose identity was known only to the local curate, Father Jean Baptiste Scuitti. From wherever he had come, the man was there voluntarily to atone for his sins by enacting the role of Christ making his way to Calvary. To Corsicans, as always, he was known only as Le Catenacciu (The Enchained One).

So popular is the part that it is booked solid for the next 40 years by applicants from as far away as Madagascar. The list includes gamblers, adulterers, ex-convicts --all seeking peace of mind. With it, they get an awful lot of exercise. The procession, chuckles Father Scuitti, "is no evening promenade." In last week's mock trip to Calvary, a short, fat man grunted and puffed as he bore the cross along a mile-and-a-half route. Coming out of the church, the Catenacciu got his huge load stuck in the doorway. Then, as he stumbled along dirt paths and darkened, cobbled streets, struggled painfully up flights of ancient granite stairs, his bare feet began to bleed. Throngs of villagers and 15,000 tourists in Sartene for the occasion gathered along the route to jeer. Three times the Catenacciu fell under his burden, and each time a fellow penitent playing the part of Simon of Cyrene whispered fiercely: "Get up! You asked for this!" At last it was all over, and as The Enchained One was whisked away in Father Scuitti's Renault, candles were lit in every Sartene window.

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