Guilherme Peixoto, a village priest in northern Portugal, has been busy this month celebrating Masses at his two parishes, presiding over remembrances for the dead — and preparing the electronic music set for his next international DJ gig.
What began nearly twenty years ago as a novel solution to fundraise for the local churches has change into essential to the ministry of this 49-year-old Catholic priest in a rapidly secularizing continent where religious practice is dropping fast — especially amongst young people.
“With electronic music I can take some message, I could be where young persons are,” Peixoto said a number of days after returning to Laúndos from playing at a big Halloween festival in Italy. “They can think, ‘If it’s possible for a priest to be DJ, it’s possible for me to love music, and festivals, and be Christian.'”
The priest broke onto the worldwide stage when the organizers of World Youth Day in Lisbon asked him to “get up the pilgrims” at 7 a.m. before Pope Francis’ open-air Mass in August.
Peixoto, who’s also a military chaplain, had been preparing for the sets he would play with the Portuguese Army’s symphony band in late October, but he put every little thing aside and commenced prepping for the large event only a number of weeks away.
On that Sunday morning, in his clerical collar and enormous black headphones amongst a crowd of white-robed bishops and before an estimated 1.5 million faithful, Peixoto swayed to the dance beat he mixed with clips of papal speeches.
Early into the 30-minute set, the 1978 exhortation by St. John Paul II to “not be afraid” to open one’s heart to Christ sounded out in Italian. Pope Francis’ words that the Church has room for all — “todos, todos, todos” in Spanish — closed out the set as pilgrims danced and Peixoto smiled broadly.
He’d been up all night to combine in audio of Francis’ speech from the previous evening. And as soon as he received Communion at Mass, he traveled greater than 4 hours back to his village for a procession, said Silvana Pontes, certainly one of his parishioners who volunteers on the club in Laúndos where “the DJ priest” plays on several weekend summer nights.
“You don’t think that we’re in a bar with a priest. You just feel it. It’s so natural and folks notice that,” Pontes said in Ar de Rock, the parish’s little open-air club on a shrine-topped hill above the village. “People see that we’re joyful.”
When Peixoto was first sent here within the mid-2000s, the parish was cash-strapped and in debt from renovations to the essential church. But parishioners were bored with bake sales and door-knocking campaigns, so Peixoto called onto the youth choirs to begin karaoke fundraisers.
And since he’d been in two bands in seminary — though he had sold his equipment and sound systems before ordination, figuring his music profession was over — he livened up those events playing rock sets from his laptop.
Within a number of years, debts were paid off, fresh church renovations were accomplished, Peixoto was taking skilled DJ classes, and most parishioners had come to take it as a right that the priest mixed a wicked beat at Ar de Rock.
“In the start it was strange, but now it’s the norm. They understood the priest can also be an individual,” said Tania Campos, who was born and raised in Laúndos where she serves as catechist, choir singer and Ar de Rock volunteer. As parish secretary, she’s also been fielding increasing numbers of calls and emails from post-World Youth Day fans.
Five dozen volunteers kept the bar going this summer on Friday nights — not Saturday, since Peixoto celebrates Sunday morning Mass — as a whole lot of individuals, sometimes three generations of the identical family, got here to bounce and mingle until 3 a.m.
On the last night of the season in September, volunteers within the kitchen — decorated with license plates brought by visitors from Arizona to São Paulo to Switzerland — prepared 300 “francesinhas poveiras” sandwiches, said Irene Pontes, a member of the parish council and volunteer for greater than a decade.
The gooey meat-and-cheese specialty from northern Portugal is very welcome after the bar’s powerful signature drink, caipirinha. More than 1,000 of those were sold the primary night they were offered at a number of euros (dollars) a glass, said Andreia Flores, who volunteers behind the bar and belongs to Peixoto’s second parish within the nearby village of Amorim.
Food and drink sales, in addition to other donations, all return to the church, which is readying its most ambitious constructing project, a recent center for youth activities.
“This is why I’m completely satisfied to be here,” Flores said. “Faith is to make others completely satisfied.”
For Peixoto, DJing in and much beyond the village has change into an important recent solution to evangelize.
“I’m making these messages arrive where the church is just not,” he said of engagements just like the Halloween festival with some 30,000 partygoers. There, he re-mixed electronic dance beats with words from Pope Francis’ encyclical about protecting the environment.
“The persons are dancing with sentences from ‘Laudato Si’,’” Peixoto added with a chuckle. “It’s not a lot — two-three sentences from the Pope — but when I wasn’t there, it’s no sentence. It’s like a small seed, and the Holy Spirit will do his work.”
In fact, it was one other document from Pope Francis, urging clergy to go find “the lost sheep,” that pushed Peixoto to work harder on his music skills in order that professional-sounding sets could change into a solution to reach those that might never step inside a church.
In Portugal, about half of young people say they don’t have any religion. Most participate less in services and have less confidence within the Church, and pray lower than older generations, in line with a recent study by Eduardo Duque, a professor on the Catholic Portuguese University in Braga.
“Padre Guilherme says, ‘If we will’t bring them to church, we’ll bring the church to them,’” said Silvana Pontes. While most who patronize Ar de Rock don’t go to Mass, she added, some change into curious enough to ask about worship times.
So Peixoto plans to proceed to enhance his DJ skills to bring a Christian message to audiences who might need never heard of Jesus — while remaining committed to all regular parish activities.
As soon as he got here off the stage just before dawn on the Halloween festival in Italy, Peixoto and his team of 12, who handle every little thing from lighting to video, rushed to the airport for flights back home so he could have a good time afternoon Mass for All Saints and All Souls celebrations.
“It’s very vital to me to not only be the priest DJ, but be the shepherd of the community,” Peixoto said. “The world is just not so closed to Jesus. But you have to speak the language.”
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