“Music brings everyone together on the dance floor, from all religions—even atheists,” Padre Guilherme said, speaking to fans during a question-and-answer session before a performance in Beirut on Jan. 11. “Electronic music is one language that all understand. It will not solve the problems of the church, of course, but it can help convey messages of faith and peace.”
The Rev. Guilherme Peixoto, the “D.J. Priest” or “Padre Guilherme,” is globally popular on the techno and house music scene. In 2023, during World Youth Day in Lisbon, he performed before the closing Mass with Pope Francis, who took a moment to privately support his D.J.-evangelization.
“Pope Francis told me, himself, to pursue this new passion,” he remembered. “I was still shy about D.J.-ing, but he pushed me, stressing that the message of Christ must be shared and not to shy away because of critics.”
Last summer, he was featured at one of the biggest music celebrations in Europe, the Medusa Festival in Spain, and in November he hosted a techno set as part of the Jubilee Youth Meeting in front of the St. Elizabeth’s Cathedral in Slovakia. Video of his performance, which included a prerecorded message from Pope Leo XIV blessing the youth, quickly went viral.
His D.J.-style—mixing religious songs with electronic music—is unique, and nightclubbers are impressed by the quality of his sets. But the performance in Beirut brought some unwelcome attention to his secondary role as the D.J.-priest.
Padre Guilherme’s social media fame brought him to the attention of Factory People, the biggest live event impresarios in Lebanon. They hired him to perform a special set at AHM, one of the biggest clubs in Beirut. The priest’s appearance struck some members of Beirut’s Maronite community as scandalous, an occasional hazard of his side trade, and a group of Beirut Christians filed a lawsuit seeking to halt the show.
“We are not like Europe,” said Sabeh Haddad, a Lebanese Christian close to the Jnoud el Rab (“Soldiers of God”) group, a hardline Christian and cultural watchdog self-described militia known for its opposition to L.G.B.T.Q. events in Lebanon.
The group’s members participate in safety patrols in the majority Christian neighborhood of Achrafieh in Beirut and have engaged in confrontations with Muslim and even other Christian groups that have resulted in bloodshed. Modeled after far-right extremist groups in Europe, the Soldiers of God is not shy about using physical intimidation to press its concerns. The group is perceived as a Christian counterweight to the rise of Islam in Lebanon and a means to defend Christian values in Lebanon’s rich mix of faiths and traditions.
“In Europe, there are no more values; nothing is holy anymore,” Mr. Haddad said. “People can decide to change gender or even identify as animals if they want to! But in Lebanon, we do not follow these principles.”
“We follow the Bible’s word, and that is it. It needs no update. God is the alpha and the omega, he is the beginning and the end of everything,” Mr. Haddad said.
Christians make up around a third of Lebanon’s 5 million people, giving the small nation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean the largest percentage of Christians in the Middle East. Maronite Catholics are the largest Christian group.
Mr. Haddad said he does not wish to be considered an opponent of good times and fun for young people, but he does stress the importance of personal responsibility: “Our faith gives us freedom. We are not against parties. Simply, the holiness of religion cannot mix with partying this way.”
The Beirut Christians who attempted to prohibit Padre Guilherme’s appearance “do not represent the Catholic Church,” Jad Souaid, the chief executive and co-founder of Factory People, told America. He goes by his professional D.J. name, Jade. “If the church itself had asked us to cancel the event, we would have, but [the litigants] have no institutional authority.”
Responding to the controversy, Factory People made a few adjustments to Padre Guilherme’s show. “The lawsuit was dismissed. Our legal team took care of it, but we wanted to calm things down,” Jade explains.
“We asked Padre Guilherme not to perform in his clerical clothing, and [that] no Christian symbols would be shown,” Jade said.
When these new restrictions were shared on social media, some of the backlash to the event subsided. Mr. Haddad decided to call off a demonstration his organization had planned.
“We were supposed to go and protest around the club area,” he said. “But when we saw that no religious symbols were used in the techno show, we decided not [to protest]. Some of our friends did buy tickets in order to make sure these rules were enforced, and they were.”
For the first time in his D.J. career, Padre Guilherme played his electro dance set in regular clothing, and no crosses or Christian images were projected during the show. “We wanted to respect the diversity of Lebanese society and be inclusive,” said Peter Mouracade, the managing director of Factory People. The attendees came from all of Beirut’s religious sects and included people from different nationalities, including Syrians and Europeans.
“Padre’s message is one of unity, peace and brotherhood, and that’s what we wanted to reflect,” Mr. Mouracade said.
Born in 1974 in Guimarães, Portugal, Father Peixoto was brought up in a Catholic household. “I would pray with my parents, who played a big part in me becoming a priest,” he remembered.
Ordained in 1999, he is a parish priest in the Archdiocese of Braga, in northern Portugal. He is also the military chaplain of the Portuguese Armed Forces, holding the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Diocese of the Armed and Security Forces. That role has brought him to countries as far-flung as Kosovo and Afghanistan, where he first began to hone his D.J. skills in 2010 while creating social events to entertain the troops.
Back home after that deployment, he spun records to raise money for a parish renovation. “We started a karaoke inside the church, and I was playing with some rhythms,” he recalled. “In record time, we had all the money needed to renovate the church.”
That is when the idea came to him that he could connect music and faith to bring youth back to the church. It soon became a regular side gig for the pastor. Today, he continues to perform as a D.J. when it does not interfere with his pastoral duties.
The last-minute limitations on his performance in Beirut did not prevent Padre Guilherme from conveying his central message of faith through different means. A recording of St. John Paul II was shown on a big screen above the D.J. with a simple message: “Let the Lord speak to man.”
“There were only two religious-linked songs,” Karl Hleyhel, an attendee at the performance, said. “No religious signs, but a dove flying, and messages both from John Paul II and Pope Leo XIV, during his visit to Lebanon early December, were shown on screen.”
Mr. Hleyhel was impressed by the energy that Padre Guilherme created when he arrived at the nightclub. “It is the happiest I have seen a crowd when greeting a D.J. Everyone was ecstatic.”
“The Catholic Church is making efforts to bring youth back to the faith, and [Padre Guilherme] is one of these people making this effort,” he said. Mr. Hleyhel described himself as “a non-religious Greek Orthodox,” but the spiritual appeals and evangelization Padre Guilherme scatters within the dance music “is something I can relate to more.”
Before his performance, Padre Guilherme celebrated Mass at Holy Spirit University, about 10 miles north of Beirut. The Mass, celebrated in both English and Arabic, was followed by a 15-minute Q&A where he not only shared his messages of peace and faith but also blessed, at her request, the headphones of an amateur D.J.
Asked about the potential drug use and heavy drinking associated with nightclub performances, Padre Guilherme simply countered, “I believe there is much more heavy drinking and drug use outside of the nightclubs than inside them,” drawing a laugh from the Holy Spirit students.
At the show Factory People staff distributed free nonalcoholic beverages to the crowd, “a way to get a shot of vitamins and to prove that there is no need for alcohol consumption to have fun,” Mr. Mouracade said.
Organizers said more than 2,000 people from different religious backgrounds attended the show. Lebanese security and the Red Cross were on hand, but no security incidents were reported.
Rita, who asked to be identified by her first name only, is a seasoned raver of 40, and a secular Maronite Catholic. Padre Guilherme “played his set from 12:30 a.m. to around 2:30 a.m.,” she said. That meant ending the night “earlier than what we are used to.”
“The diversity in age was remarkable,” she said, “with more older people than what we see at parties with regular Lebanese D.J.s.”
Though Mr. Hleyhel considers himself fully secularized, he appreciates efforts made by the church to bring the youth back to faith. “Padre Guilherme is a perfect example; he uses music to bring us closer to God. Music is a language I speak, and if the church is using it to bring people like me back to faith, it is working somehow!”
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