60 Seconds on Earth: A Filipino tour guide's hilarious protest against the power of the Catholic Church

GlobalPost

Editor's note: 60 Seconds on Earth is a regular GlobalPost series where our correspondents in the field produce video snapshots of the places and people that we find important, impressive, crazy or just unmistakably cool. Here's a recent installment on Kyiv's Maidan.

MANILA, Philippines — Carlos Celdran may show tourists the sights of Manila, but he thinks of himself more as performance artist than guide.

His website warns, “Content tends to offend people with no sense of humor nor sense of drama.” 

And his art has a message.

“To be Filipino is to be Catholic!” Celdran shouts to visitors. “And theocracy is when your government is ruled through religious extremism.”

On his tours, he makes it a point to criticize the country’s religious leaders, and their sway in government.

“When the Catholic Church in the Philippines threatened civil disobedience, trying to prevent our Reproductive Health Bill from being passed, I decided to show them what civil disobedience is about myself,” he says.

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