Priests to Pinoys: Please bathe on Good Friday

Get rid of that foul smell, do bathe, even if it’s Good Friday. This is the appeal of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) to Filipinos who still believe that it is forbidden to bathe during Good Friday when Jesus Christ died on the cross. “Take a bath. These are superstitious beliefs (that) have no religious bearing," CBCP Spokesman Msgr. Pedro Quitorio III said in an interview. Despite the extreme heat during summer when Holy Week is observed, many Filipinos adhere to the belief that it is forbidden to take a bath or do laundry after three in the afternoon of Good Friday. Some believe that if a person performs these activities after 3 p.m. - the time when Christ gave his last breath while hanged on the cross - something bad will happen to him. Instead of enduring the summer heat and the possibility of having a bad odor throughout the day, Quitorio said Filipinos should celebrate Christ’s death with a bath. “What is true is that we are celebrating his death which happened centuries ago. In fact chapter 6 of (the book of) Matthew says that if you fast, you need to take a bath so that people will not notice what you are doing, so that your father who knows what is done in secret will reward you," he ended. Not bathing during Good Friday was traced to the Spanish friars who during colonization, thought that such hygiene was strange. The friars told Filipinos not to bathe daily or they would get ill. - GMANews.TV