Have you heard of Brazilian priest, Marcelo Rossi? Apparently he got John Allen excited enough to say he enjoys pop music at Mass. I’d never heard of him before I read Allen’s report. Rossi, who is known in Brazil as “the aerobics priest,” regularly draws 10,000 people to Mass several times a week!

Here’s an excerpt from Allen:

Rossi may not be a household name elsewhere, but he’s easily the most famous priest in Brazil, and by a huge margin. In fact, the typical Brazilian probably couldn’t pick the cardinal of São Paulo out of a lineup, but they all know the handsome, tall, wildly charismatic Padre Marcelo, a 42-year-old former aerobics instructor whose CDs with pop-style songs of praise have sold in the millions and earned him a Latin Grammy.

He’s also starred in a enormously popular movie about Mary, in which he plays a parish priest telling the Madonna’s story to a little girl. His Masses routinely draw tens of thousands of people to a former glass factory on the southern edge of São Paulo, and he once actually celebrated a Mass for some two million people on a Formula One race course.

You can read the rest of the story here.