The Rev. Guilherme Peixoto was sitting down to dinner the day before a high-profile DJ show in Slovakia — a combination youth festival and celebration of the archbishop of Kosice’s birthday — when the church’s production team began buzzing with enthusiasm.
They had a new opening act: a message from Pope Leo 14.
Peixoto, a 51-year-old priest and DJ based in Braga, northern Portugal, was quick to adapt to the news of the day before. For almost two weeks before the November event, he immersed himself in the melodic techno beats of Slovak producers and selected popular anthems in Polish and Slovak. He now had to integrate a special video message from the Holy Father, sent by the Vatican to surprise the archbishop.
“I said, ‘Yeah, okay, I have to work on this for tomorrow,’” Peixoto recalled in a Zoom interview last week.
Along with his team members, Peixoto worked through the night, adding synthesizer tracks to the pope’s speech, mixing and mastering, and waking up at 3 a.m. to finish.
That night, mist hung around St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral in Kosice, lighting up spectacularly, as Leo 14’s message played on a video screen with swirling synthesizers. As the pope’s “Amen” echoed through the crowd, the lights flashed and the music swelled.
Then Peixoto dropped the rhythm.
The video of the set’s opening went viral, attracting more than 10 million views on Instagram alone. The staging was so dramatic, the scene so improbable – a Gothic cathedral, a DJ priest, the Pope – that many viewers wondered if the clip was artificial intelligence.
Contrary to this, Peixoto says he seeks a real connection with his work as a DJ, which he calls “the project”. In a time of increasing social isolation among the world’s youth, Peixoto is optimistic about the power of electronic music to amplify the message of God’s love.
The parties repay the parish debt
Peixoto knew he wanted to be a priest long before he started grooving to crowds with snippets of “Ave Maria” and the Super Mario theme song and gyrating to house music alongside sunglasses-wearing acolytes.
But he also loved nightlife, frequenting the underground house and techno scenes in his youth of artists such as Carl Cox, a British house DJ, and Jeff “The Wizard” Mills, a Detroit techno producer. In seminary, Peixoto continued to visit clubs and play in a band with other seminarians, all of whom were convinced that they would give up music after being ordained.
Peixoto began his priestly life in 2001, in Póvoa de Varzim, a Portuguese coastal town located about 30 km north of Porto. His bishop soon asked him to take over another nearby church, which was facing debt and in need of renovations.
To raise money, Peixoto decided the church would open a small church bar during the summer. Soon the church added music evenings with church choirs and karaoke.
“But calm music, romantic music, is not good for business,” Peixoto said. “People want to sing, they need to dance to have fun.”
Peixoto controlled the music through his laptop, gradually expanding his equipment and DJ skills. In three years, he said, the parish repaid its debt of around 29,000 US dollars (around 156,000 reais).
A recognized perfectionist, Peixoto wanted to further professionalize his work as a DJ, learning how to set up a set and produce music. So, in his forties, he enrolled in a DJ school in Porto, where he was quickly put to the test by his classmates, many of whom were children.
“I was angry sometimes because they learned so much faster than me. How is it possible that these kids mix so well?” Peixoto said, laughing.
Sometimes his DJ lessons took a backseat to office tasks, such as when he had to tell his teacher he had to leave the class.
Peixoto did not forget to explain: “Someone died in my parish, I have to organize the funeral.”
Sacred music everywhere
While a party-loving priest from the techno scene is exactly the kind of unexpected combination that goes viral on social media, the Catholic Church has a long history of incorporating secular music, says Andrew Gill, producer and co-host of the podcast Rock That Doesn’t Roll: The Story of Christian Music.
It was the Church’s efforts in the 1960s to modernize the liturgy, with the Second Vatican Council, that led congregations to trade in organs and Gregorian chants for guitar-accompanied hymns sung in English, Gill says. One of the most popular films of the era, “The Sound of Music,” shows how secular music can serve as a vehicle for worship, he said.
“You have a nun who is just in love with the world and with God, who sees everything as a whole,” he said. “It’s a tradition that I see happening to this DJ (Peixoto).”
Although traditionalists may scoff at a clergyman surrounded by elements of nightlife, the two ideas are not opposed, says David Dark, a professor of religion and the arts at Belmont University.
If the Church exists to proclaim the Gospel and the kingdom of God, there is no division between the profane and the sacred, Dark said, including in music.
“There is no ‘profane’ molecule in the universe. There is no dandelion belonging to the devil,” said Dark, author of “Everyday Apocalypse: Art, Empire, and the End of the World.” He added that the idea that Peixoto would bring religion into a non-religious space makes no sense if one believes – like the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins – “that ‘the world is charged with the greatness of God'”.
Trust, Faith and Headphone Blessings
Peixoto, who usually performs wearing a clerical collar, says he has found little conflict between his ministry and his job as a “DJ priest.” He says he thinks carefully about how his roles overlap, checking whether a club’s rules or a party’s theme would conflict with his status as a clergyman. If a festival, for example, planned to use demonic imagery in decorations, he says he wouldn’t participate.
“I think we should live in the world without losing our identity,” Peixoto said. “Most people who talk about electronic music don’t know what electronic music is.”
He says people who criticize his association with electronic music culture – perhaps linking it to drugs or hedonism – have probably never been to a festival or club: “They criticize what they don’t know. »
Like Jesus and the apostles, Peixoto has a team of 12 people who support his musical ministry. The money received from the shows is reinvested in the team, with the blessing of the Archbishop of Braga, says Peixoto.
Sometimes his superiors worry that others will talk to them about the nature of his DJ work or the venues where he performs. Peixoto says he asks them for advice and is always supported and encouraged to continue.
“Even though my bishop doesn’t understand everything, he trusts what I do,” Peixoto said.
Although Peixoto did not personally meet Leo 14, the Vatican recognized his evangelizing work on the dance floor last month in a statement regarding the event at Kosice Cathedral. Peixoto met with Pope Francis three times. In the second, he asked the Pope to bless his Sennheiser headphones.
“I don’t know if he knows what a DJ is or not, but I said I was a DJ and asked for the blessing of the headphones,” Peixoto said. “The bishops, the cardinals, everyone made fun of the situation.”
Ultimately, Peixoto says he hopes to help young people experience God’s love through the joy, friendship and camaraderie found in music. He wants them to understand, in their struggle for identity and belonging, that – to paraphrase Carlo Acutis, the first millennial saint – they must live not as copies, but as unique originals created by God.
“We don’t all need to play the same music, we don’t all need to think the same way, have the same vision,” Peixoto said. On the dance floor, people can be together as one, united despite their differences.
Today, Peixoto plays with professional equipment. He combs through 200-year-old Catholic hymns and speeches by previous popes and pacifist figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. to find excerpts relevant to the audience he will perform for — Fatima in Portugal, Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico or Virgin Mary in Italy.
This preparation means that when he goes on stage, his “work” is already done.
“I just appreciate and feel that God is present, that God is on the dance floor with us,” Peixoto said. “When I look at the crowd, I feel like they feel God too.”
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