"PADRE PISTOLAS" (Pistol Packing Padre)

Priest in Mexico packs pistol and builds a following
By Mary Jordan, Washington Post (June 6, 2004)

CHUCANDIRO, Mexico -- Alfredo Gallegos Lara is 6 feet 4, sings country music, and keeps a 9 m.m. pistol tucked into his belt. No ordinary gunslinger, he may be Mexico's most unusual parish priest.

One recent afternoon, (Fr.) Gallegos, 52, pulled off his religious vestments behind the altar of the Catholic Church in this town in central Mexico, revealing jeans, crocodile boots, and a shiny black pistol. Mexico has strict laws forbidding private citizens to carry guns, but Fr. Gallegos said he has always informed police about them and the police haven't complained. After all, his pistols are why the unorthodox priest, with a growing following in Mexico and the United States, is called "Padre Pistolas."

"Four of my friends have been killed, and three of my trucks have been stolen," he said, explaining that his ministry to drug addicts and the sick takes him through the back roads of central Mexico, where it is wise, he said, to be armed. The youngest of 10 children in a wealthy family with a long history of military service and fine marksmanship, Gallegos boasts that he can pick off a soft-drink can at 80 feet.

Ever since he entered the seminary at age 14, his handling of guns has been drawing popular attention as well as criticism from his Church superiors. "I have been fighting with the Bishop. He is so angry with me. He doesn't like my gun," Father Gallegos said.

He said Archbishop Alberto Suarez Inda is also uncomfortable with his high-profile fund-raising and construction projects. Gallegos has built 40 miles of roads, as well as basketball courts, schools, churches, and bridges in and around Jaral del Refugio in the neighboring state of Guanajuato, where he was the parish priest for 24 years. He said he raised millions of dollars for the projects. He makes frequent fund-raising trips to Illinois, North Carolina, and California, and migrants there have encouraged him to create a Padre Pistolas website, key chains, compact discs, and posters.

Fr. Gallegos said he has gone hunting with law enforcement officers in the United States and sung to standing-room-only crowds in Chicago's popular Concordia Restaurant. Town President Ramiro Gonzalez of Cicero, Ill., just outside Chicago, has helped him arrange fund-raisers and traveled to his parish in Mexico to see his public works projects.

Gonzalez said migrants return to their Mexican hometowns from well-paved American cities and "see that the roads are the same way they were a billion years ago, and they say, 'How much can this cost? $10,000? Then let's get together and do it.' " But they need someone trustworthy to handle the money, he said, someone "with the magnitude of leadership of Padre Pistolas."

Still, Rev. Gallegos's guns and his super-sized persona have gotten him into hot water with the local Bishop, who wants him to leave building roads and hospitals to the government and televised musical performances to entertainers. "He wants me to stick to baptizing children and saying Mass," Fr. Gallegos said.

"Is that possible?" he is asked.

"Oh, no!" he responded with a wink.

+Suarez, the Bishop, declined to be interviewed. "Oh, God," moaned the person answering the phone in his office in Morelia, when asked for a comment about Padre Pistolas. "Don't pay too much attention to him."

But it is hard not to. He has a powerful singing voice that draws applause wherever he starts singing -- at Mass, in restaurants, on the street corner. He is unabashedly comfortable with his attention-grabbing role.

In May, +Suarez removed Gallegos from Jaral. Tearful followers sent him off with a parade.

When asked about him, Valentina Guzman started crying. "He built our roads and bridges. When I hurt my foot, he took care of me," she said. "And he is such a good singer."

Recently, Fr. Gallegos had started raising money for a hospital and museum in Jaral. "The hospital had not been approved by the government," said Jose Angel Parrales Espinoza, an official in that municipality. "We agree that there should be a regional hospital. But things should be done in a correct way." Still, he said, Padre Pistolas is "an original," loved by many people.

Father Gallegos was reassigned to this town of 3,000 in Michoacan State, 25 miles east of the capital city of Morelia, where most of the men have gone to the United States to work. An official, Francisco Garibay Arroyo, said his impoverished town wanted somebody who could raise money and make improvements, and didn't mind Fr. Gallegos's "custom of collecting guns."

Rev. Fr. Gallegos said he loves The Church but its leaders need to worry less about his guns and more about The Church's bigger problems, such as pedophilia scandals in the United States

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PS: Read the new book "GUN SAINT" by John Michael Snyder -- the story of St. Gabriel Possenti (photo above) and of efforts to promote his official Vatican designation as Patron Saint of Handgunners. -- Fr. Steve +