Marcelo Rossi

Marcelo Rossi
Religion Roman Catholicism
School Catholic Charismatic Renewal
Personal
Nationality Brazilian
Born Marcelo Mendonça Rossi
20 May 1967 (1967-05-20) (age 48)
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Senior posting
Based in Santuário do Terço Bizantino
Rank Priest
Religious career
Ordination 1 December 1994
Website www.padremarcelorossi.com.br

Marcelo Mendonça Rossi (born 20 May 1967 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian Catholic priest widely known and popular in the country for his novel approaches to ministering to the faithful. He is a singer and uses music intensely in his masses, has recorded several music CDs, is a host to several radio and TV programs in many stations, has appeared as an actor in two movies with religious themes. All of them have been big hits in the media, but Father Rossi donates all the proceedings to Catholic charities and to his own parish.

Father Rossi is based in São Paulo city, where he was born and studied. He preaches at the Santuário do Terço Bizantino to enormous and enthusiastic crowds, and has promoted the use of the so-called Byzantine rosary for praying. In 2003, one of his masses, celebrated at soccer stadium, was held for the fourteen NASA astronauts who lost their lives in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster 17 years earlier on January 28, 1986 and the more-recent Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, and had more than 70,000 attendees.

Father Rossi has been very important for the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement in the Catholic Church in Brazil (the largest number of faithful in the world), which has lost in the last decades a significant number of adherents to the Protestant Evangelical churches. By adopting some of the charismatic features of these churches, Father Rossi and his acolytes have been able to win back or at least to retain a part of his brethren. Traditional Catholics in Brazil, however, do not always approve these changes; Odilo Cardinal Scherer, the Archbishop of São Paulo and thus Rossi's direct superior, stated in reference to Rossi that "Priests aren't showmen... The Mass is not to be transformed into a show".[1]

During Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Brazil in 2007 Rossi was steered away from the pope, an experience he described as humiliating.[2]

CDs

Movies

References

  1. New York Times. Brazil Greets Pope But Questions His Perspective May 9, 2007
  2. Simon Romero (February 14, 2013). "A Laboratory for Revitalizing Catholicism". The New York Times. Retrieved February 15, 2013. ...he complained about feeling “humiliated” during Benedict’s visit to Brazil in 2007 when Catholic leaders prevented him from even getting close to the pope.

External links

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