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| Wednesday, 26 October 2011 18:00 | |||||
Padre Marcelo is Rome's secret weapon by Mac Margolis
Such is the life of Marcelo Mendonça Rossi,
the 44-year-old priest from São Paulo who has become Latin America's,
and one of the Roman Catholic world's, leading evangelists. Famed for
the rollicking masses he celebrated in the late 90s, where multitudes
swayed, chanted and swooned to songs set to pop music scores and
aerobics, Rossi has been reborn as Brazil's hottest new author. His
debut title, Ágape, an easy-reading self-help riff on St. John's gospel,
has flown off the shelves since it was launched last August. Rossi's
publisher, Editora Globo, knew they'd struck gold signing Rossi - even
an autographed napkin by Brazil's star preacher would be a winner - and
boldly projected sales of a million copies by mid 2011. But the spirit
moves in wondrous ways. Rossi's Sunday sermons and broadcast prayathons
spread the word. A network of bookshops, hypermarkets, and Avon ladies
did the rest. By late October, sales had tipped the 5 million mark,
shattering all national records. It was no different in São Gonçalo, where two dozen security guards, a medical team, and roving booksellers were deployed to tend the crowds as they poured off city buses into a roped off parking lot outside the mall, where some had slept. "I get butterflies in my stomach when I see this," says Rossi, as his black Toyota Corolla edged up to the mall, where the lines coiled around the block. The most ardent fans waited up to 13 hours or more for a chance to see him, calling in sick at the office, cutting class and enlisting baby sitters for the promise of a glimpse and a blessing from the pop holy man. One was Rita de Cassia, 50, who sells handbags door to door. "This morning when I left home I told my husband, ‘Honey, today, I belong to Padre Marcelo. And I don't know when I'm going to be home'," she laughed. Rossi burst into religious life in the late nineties, when the Roman Catholic Church was bleeding souls in a war of attrition against galloping secularism and aggressive Protestant Evangelicals sects. Pentecostal Christians were sweeping Latin America, where fast talking pastors hung their shingles in storefronts prayer halls, culling the broken and bewildered. Census takers reported that the number of professed Catholics plunged from 89 percent of the population in 1980 to 73 percent by 2000, possibly falling further in the decade since. During the same period evangelical Protestants doubled their flock, from 8 to 16 percent of the population. At this pace, some scholars predicted, the world's largest Catholic congregation would be half Protestant by mid 21st century. At the same time, faithlessness had spiked, with the number of Brazilians professing no religion at all doubling to 9 million by the mid 2000s. Rome's strongest fortress was under siege. As the congregation
thinned, the bishops huddled. Liberation Theology, a grassroots offshoot
of Catholicism that mingled Marxism and Franciscan asceticism, was in
retreat, most evidently in Latin America. Barefoot priests and
guitar-strumming Christian activists had turned the church into an
important bunker of resistance during the era of military dictatorship
but they lost their cachet when democracy returned in the 1980s and 90s.
The Brazil's National Conference of Bishops cleaned house, purging the
hierarchy of its prominent "red bishops". But no one doubted that
Catholicism needed a shot in the arm. Enter Padre Marcelo.
photo Sérgio Savarese Soon the pews began to overflow. To avoid a stampede at the door he invited worshippers to stay on for an after mass workout, attracting even bigger crowds. Over time, he garnished the routine with live bands, choreographed step aerobics, and pop rock hymns, leading the chorus in his throaty tenor. "The Lord's aerobics", he called them, eventually recording an eponymous selection of favorites, which became the first of 12 gold and platinum CDs, selling 12 million copies. His latest disc, Ágape Musical, a melodic version of his book, was released in September. Open air masses, radiocasts, and appearances on television variety shows followed. Some 2 million Brazilians watched his film, "Maria, the Mother of the Son of God", with Padre Marcelo playing the angel Gabriel. The neighborhood church where he'd begun was no longer big enough so Rossi began to preach in a converted warehouse, drawing tens of thousands. His followers scattered throughout Brazil to watch him on a 6 a.m Sunday prayer meeting, on TV Globo, Brazil's leading broadcaster. Now, with the coffers topped up with royalties from Ágape ($4.5 million, and counting) he plans to build the Marcelo Rossi Sanctuary, a mega church in São Paulo designed by famed Brazilian architect Ruy Ohtake, with seating for 100,000. Not since Padre Cicero, the folk priest of the poor northeast backlands, famed for curing the ill and inspiring the hopeless, has the Roman Catholic world seen such star power. But Cicero ministered to starvelings and humble peasants, a ray of light in the dustbowl. Rossi has made his ministry in Latin America's biggest metropolis, moving millions to worship and cutting across lines of class and religion. "70 percent of the people who read my book are Catholics, but 20 percent are Protestant evangelicals and 10 percent follow spirit cults," he says, with pride. The bishopric ought to be beaming. But that has not always been the case. Just mention Benedict's XVI's inaugural trip to Brazil, in 2007, and watch the normally serene Rossi fume. The Holy Father's call on the Vatican's flock of record is an unparalleled honor, and by star power alone Rossi belongs on the Brazilian church's A-list of clerical hosts. But when the time came for Benedict's São Paulo open-air appearance, Rossi found himself relegated to a warm-up act, slotted for 5:40 a.m., hours before the pope was scheduled to appear. "I was boycotted, humiliated," he says. Even then he was delayed by security on grounds he didn't have a stage pass. "I was supposed to perform and they said I had the wrong credentials!" Eventually, Rossi was cleared and preached to a sparse crowd in the Sao Paulo chill, but he never saw the pope and carried the slight for years. "It hurt me profoundly," he recalls. He blamed the offense on "envy" of devotees of Liberation Theology, who he said still have sway in the São Paulo curia. Vindication came last year when he was graced with the Vatican's coveted Van Thuan prize (named for the Vietnamese cardinal imprisoned by the Communist regime) for his work as a modern day evangelist. But his trials were not over. Three days after learning he was to be garlanded in Rome, he stumbled while jogging on a treadmill, took a bad spill and shattered several bones in his foot. "If I operated, I'd have to cancel my trip. If I didn't," he pauses for effect, "I was in God's hands." He took the gamble and, pumped up with pain killers and cortisone shots, finally met the pope. But the whole experience - the church politics, the injury, the painful convalescence - took its toll and Rossi fell into a "deep sadness". His only solace was St. John's gospel and a word processor. Six months later, with the help of a ghost writer, Ágape was ready. "I never asked anyone why any of this happened to me, but for what purpose," says Rossi, as his driver evades the crowds and slips into a side entrance of the shopping center. "Today you can see the result," he scans the columns of faithful, a crowd that by nightfall would reach 20,000. It's a scene to which the Vatican - and booksellers - can only say Amen. |
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