Apia: A young Protestant woman in a tiny Polynesian nation has developed stigmata after playing Jesus in an Easter play.
The incident has divided the people of the Independent State of Samoa in the South Pacific Ocean.
Some saw it as a miracle, while others dismissed it as a hoax and suggested the 23-year-old woman undergo psychological counseling.
Toaipuapuaga Opapo Soana’I developed wounds on her hands and feet when she played Jesus in a Sunday school Easter play at the Congregational Church where her father is a minister.
The Protestant Congregational Churches allow each congregation to independently and autonomously run its own affairs. Congregationalism is often considered a part of the wider Reformed tradition.
Paul Morris from the department of religious studies at Victoria University of Wellington said it was extremely unusual for stigmata to occur outside of the Catholic Church. “It is unusual… there are literally a handful of non-Catholic stigmata cases,” Professor Morris told the ABC.
The Australian news portal, abc.net.au, says the phenomenon is the result of rapid social change and the challenge of new religious movements to mainstream Christianity in Samoa.
Morris says the Congregational Church, which is the largest in Samoa has undergone tremendous pressure from other Churches during the past 15 to 20 years.
“In the history of stigmata incidents, they arise in a particular social reality and context and call those who are ebbing away from faith, back to faith.
“So in that way, it isn’t all that unusual in terms of the context, but, she should be Catholic.”
The professor also says auto-suggestibility can lead to stigmata.
But questions remain over what would be an appropriate response to the case.
“The first response must be that this is a breach of nature, and that it doesn’t make sense,” Professor Morris said.
But he said there was good evidence to see it not simply as a hoax, which is generally the norm.
“The other explanation is that it’s psycho-somatic, that intensity of identification… where a young woman or man identify with Jesus to an extreme degree,” Professor Morris said.
“This auto-suggestibility [can] lead to this physical transformation.”
Professor Morris cited rapid social change and the challenges of religious security, which can catalyze “a call to faith”, for reasons why it could have happened in Samoa.
Samoa is located south of the equator, about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand in the Polynesian region of the Pacific Ocean. The total land area is 2,842 km² consisting of the two large islands of Upolu and Savai’i which account for 99 percent of the total land area, and eight small islets.