The Telegraph: Flamenco-dansende præst får menigheden tilbage i kirken
2. aug. 2014
The Telegraphs skriver bl.a.:
A Roman Catholic priest who dances traditional flamenco from the pulpit in southern Spain has become an internet hit
Jose Planas Moreno has brought parishioners flocking back to the Nuestra Señora del Carmen church in Campanilla, a district of Malaga, with his unusual style of worship.
Unlike across the rest of Spain where the Catholic Church has struggled with falling numbers, the priest, who is known as Father Pepe, celebrates mass to a packed congregation with queues regularly forming outside his church.
The 66-year-old curate delights the faithful by dancing the sevillanas – a traditional dance linked to flamenco – in the aisle of the church during mass.
Female worshippers leap from their pews to take a turn dancing with Father Pepe as he hitches up his white cassock, raises his arms above his head and kicks his heels.
Videos of a recent mass taken on the local feast day and uploaded onto YouTube and gone viral on social networks and spread Father Pepe's fame far beyond his parish.
"Something happens when I dance," said Father Pepe, who explained that flamenco is in his blood because his mother was a gipsy.
"I love it. It brings me closer to God," he told Diario Sur, the local Malaga newspaper.
In 1997, Father Pepe, who will retire in September, danced in front of the late Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.
He was among 3,000 or so gipsies who broke into dance to celebrate the beatification of the first Romany saint, Ceferino Gimenez Mallo, a Spaniard shot by a leftist execution squad during Spain's Civil War for defending a priest
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