Reaching Souls in a Stadium

The vast stadium is plunged into darkness. Suddenly its four corners ig nite in a frenzy of fireworks, then rockets burst overhead as an announcer shouts: "Attention, Belo Horizonte. Attention, Brazil. Attention, World. Cristo Total is on the Air!" What follows is a shocker of a religious pageant, sponsored by the Roman Catholic Church.

Its recent performances in Belo Horizonte sold out the 16,000-seat America Soccer Club Stadium. Pontius Pilate wheels into field center in a white con ertible sports car with motorcycle escort. God is played by 42 girls robed in white. Throughout the spectacle, dancers writhe to twists, tangos, rock 'n' roll and American movie music.

The moving spirit behind this worldly-wise enterprise is Sister Benedita Idefelt, 43, a Catholic nun from Finland, who now teaches school in the Brazilian town of Juiz de Fora. In Cristo Total, Sister Benedita has retold the Catholic devotion of the Stations of the Cross, taking bold liberties with the story.

"I wanted to show that Christ didn't die and that was the end of him, back in the year 33," says Sister Benedita.

"That's why Christ doesn't appear. He is represented by all humanity." Against Divorce? In Christ's absence, the audience itself stands trial. At the first Station, a radio reporter assisting Pilate asks prominent citizens whether the accused (Christ-humankind) is guilty. "Too bad he is so demode," testi fies a society lady. "He's against di orce. Imagine! Against divorce, when nobody belongs to nobody." An industrialist insists that Christ should be condemned because he advocates profit-sharing and a shorter work week.

At the sixth Station, the voice of Veronica offers "to wipe the sweat of those who carry the Cross." The band plays I Believe as a whole gallery of unfortunates rushes forth to beg compassion, among them a convict, an unwed mother ("Wipe my face, me who carries in my belly a son who has no father"), an unemployed worker and a prostitute ("Why won't humanity let me up out of the mud?").

At the tenth Station, paralleling the moment when Christ is stripped of his clothes, a band of ragged Brazilian peasants straggles onto one end of the field. They watch in silence while dozens of flamboyantly dressed carnival dancers do the samba and throw paper streamers. Asked how much he paid for his costume, one dancer replies: "Ten million cruzeiros." The samba suddenly breaks into a tortured twist. Finally, of course, humanity is crucified--all 720 players form a giant Cross and carry their torches into the night to the tune of the Colonel Bogey March.

Stronger Stuff. Sister Benedita agrees that her pageant "isn't really religious at all--it's more of a social attack against injustices." She believes she learned about cruelty at the end of the war in Germany. "German and Russian soldiers battled under our noses. When it was all over, I had to identify the dead. There were mounds of corpses, some without heads, and I went through their pockets looking for some information about them. I saw that both sides had families. Both carried religious medals, and both were human."

When she first got the "divine inspiration" for Cristo Total, Sister Benedita recruited two businessmen in Juiz de Fora to collaborate with her. The final script was shown to a local bishop, Dom Geraldo Penido. "I watched him read it, and he kept glancing up at me from behind his thick glasses. I thought, 'Oh, brother, I've had it.' " Dom Geraldo liked it, but thought it could be stronger. "It was then," says Sister, "that I added the prostitute and the unwed mother."

Her road show, with a cast of unpaid volunteers (nurses, farmers, seminary students, and the Juiz de Fora Police Band), has now weathered two repeat performances. Argentina and Chile would like to see it, and a copy of the script has been requested by the Vatican. Despite some criticism that the cha cha cha is not churchly enough, she remains convinced that you "can't reach modern souls with music out of camel caravans."

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