Small town burns effigy to mark Orthodox Good Friday

People prepare an effigy of Barabbas – a figure in the Bible’s New Testament whom Pontius Pilate freed instead of Jesus Christ – for its customary burning, in the town of Nea Kios, in Argolida in the Peloponnese, which is re-enacted on Orthodox Christian Good Friday. According to the religious custom, on Friday morning, local residents prepare a large model of Barabbas which is then placed on a scaffold about 8 meters in height. The effigy is lit at the time of the open-air procession of the Epitaph – the symbolic body of Christ – while the colorful firecrackers later in the night are meant to shift the mournful mood of the worshippers. [Evangelos Bougiotis/AMNA]