Holy Week could make sense for non-Christians

Holy Week could make sense even for those who do not share the Christian myth, if it were a vindication, not of the brutal death of a single man two thousand years ago, but of the violated dignity of all those who were then victims of the viciousness of power, including those crucified with Jesus outside Jerusalem. Perhaps this commemoration would be even more significant if it were of those whose lives continue to this day to be shattered by criminal states. After all, the infamies and outrages perpetrated by despots who dream of old or new empires always end up returning -there they are now, clearly perceptible, in the barbarism suffered in Eastern Europe- as insistently as vigils and processions return, year after year.

(Fernando Bermejo Rubio, “La identidad de los crucificados en el Gólgota: lo que una investigación histórica descubre sobre la muerte de Jesús”, in EL PAÍS, 3 April 2023. He is a professor in the Department of Ancient History at the UNED and author of ‘La invención de Jesús de Nazaret’)

(Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator, free version)