THE GOAN NETWORK
PANAJI
The second edition of the biggest crib in Goa was inaugurated on Monday evening at the hands of Vicar General Fr Jose Remedios Fernandes in the presence of Fr Adriano Furtado, Parish Priest of Our Lady of Remedios Church at Betalbatim in South Goa, Fr Dinesh Mendonca and hundreds of villagers who waited anxiously for more than two hours in a queue to view the largest human size scenes from the Bible recreated here. The crib will be open for public viewing till January 9.
“Let us follow the preaching and teaching of Jesus Christ who asked people to stay with him and follow him,” said Vicar General Fr Jose Remedios Fernandes while blessing the crib at the opening ceremony. Depicting stories from the Bible recreated across 800 sq meters of area near the Betalbhatim church, the crib began to get shape in October this year, with around 700 plus villagers voluntarily coming together and giving their time, raw material, and efforts to work on the various themes discussed earlier. “We have seven wadde in our village and each one was assigned a specific scene for recreation by Parish Priest Fr Adriano Furtado, under whose guidance we all worked hand in hand. Last year the number of volunteers was around 350 which has doubled this year,” said Peter Santimano from Pokwado, adding further that last year around 50,000 people had visited the crib, and this year more people are expected to come.
“The concept of creating a large crib started in 2021 after Fr Adriano took over as the Parish Priest at our Church with ‘Come, stay with me’ theme. This year’s theme is ‘Come, follow me’ and all the scenes are recreated around this theme,” said Menino Cota, moderator of the crib team. The seven waddos – Ranwaddo, Pokwaddo, Nagwaddo, Binwaddo, Tonwaddo, Gonsua waddo, and Chawal & Hapot waddo in Betalbatim village came together weaving different messages from the Bible.
The scenes depicted the beginning of the world when God calls Abraham to be the beginning of a whole new nation, that would be called God’s people, the people of Israel, and God calls Moses to lead the people of Israel out of the Egyptian bondage, Adam and Eve in the forest under the tree of the forbidden fruit, Noah’s arc and the animals within it, Mother Mary and Joseph, the stable where Jesus was born and Jordon where he was baptised, Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Egypt where he roamed and so on. Apart from this the anointed saints and their works have been showcased including Mother Teresa and St Joseph Vaz. Also, two scenes are assigned for post-confirmation and pre-confirmation each.
“We had last year’s material with us which was reused this year too,” said Cota, adding that this time the crib size is three times bigger than 2021 Christmas, which meant the requirement of more material. People donated voluntarily their time, money and materials needed to create the crib. A corpus of Rs 12 lakh was collected through spot public donations in 2021 which was used last year and the balance amount was utilised this year. The material is reused during Easter, fests etc.
“We visited the crib last year and were eager to come and view it this year too,” said a person who had come from Taleigao to Betalbatim only to witness the inauguration. Another woman from Mumbai said she was here last year too. “The crib and the theme around which it is weaved has a message for humanity, to stay together in times of crises and help each other,” said another man from the village.
