Padre Guilherme is a Catholic priest from northern Portugal who has spent the last six years building one of the more improbable careers in electronic music. He still says Mass. He also closed the Main Stage at Untold, played beneath Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, and had a sitting Pope turn up at one of his shows. The clerical collar is not a costume, which is precisely why the whole thing works.
Who Padre Guilherme actually is
His name is Guilherme Guimarães Peixoto. He was born in Guimarães in 1974, which makes him 52, and he has been a priest since 1999. Before any of the festival bookings, he served as a chaplain in the Portuguese Army and deployed to Kosovo and Afghanistan. He currently serves parishes in Laundos and Amorim, in the Archdiocese of Braga.
The DJing started in Afghanistan in 2010. He was organising social events for soldiers on the base and ended up handling the music. Back in Portugal he took proper DJ lessons, then started throwing club nights to raise money for his parish church in Laundos. That is the unglamorous origin story: a village priest running fundraisers.
The pandemic, and then Lisbon
During the Covid lockdowns he began streaming weekly sets, layering electronic music with religious and folk records. The nickname stuck and so did the audience. His years active date from 2020, which is worth keeping in mind given how quickly the rest happened.
The real breakthrough came in August 2023 at World Youth Day in Lisbon, where he played an early morning open air set to wake pilgrims camped at Parque Tejo before the closing Mass. Footage of a priest in a black shirt and collar working a set of Pioneer decks in front of a field of teenagers travelled a long way, very fast.
One detail often gets scrambled in the retellings. His set beneath the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, which racked up well over a million views on YouTube, came in January 2025, roughly seventeen months after Lisbon. Rio made him famous in Brazil. Lisbon is what made him famous at all.
The night Pope Leo XIV turned up
In November 2025 he played outside the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth in Košice, Slovakia, at an event marking Archbishop Bernard Bober’s 75th birthday. Partway through, Pope Leo XIV appeared on the screens above the stage and blessed the crowd. A gothic cathedral, a full production rig, a papal address and a techno set is not a combination anyone had filed under likely.
What Padre Guilherme actually plays
The sets are not novelty. They are built on functional four four material with religious source audio threaded through: Ave Maria, church bells, and spoken excerpts from papal encyclicals including Francis’s Laudato si’ and Fratelli Tutti. The texts are not decoration either. Laudato si’ is about ecology, and he named a 2025 EP Integral Ecology after the idea.
He releases through his own label, Lux Aeterna Records. The catalogue runs from “Ave Maria” with Karetus in 2022 through the Póvoa Bendita EP in 2023, a 2024 remix EP of Pedro Cazanova’s “Selfish Love”, and two 2025 records, Veneremur Et Adoremus with Ebmath and Integral Ecology. In August 2025 he also put out a techno remix of the Super Mario Bros. theme, which suggests he is not precious about the brief.
Beirut, and the part that was not easy
In January 2026 he played a sold out show at AHM in Beirut. A group of Christian religious figures petitioned a Lebanese court to block it. The court rejected the request and the show went ahead. It is the clearest example of the tension he operates inside: the objection came from within his own religious community, not from the club world.
He has been consistent about the reasoning. For him the decks are a way to reach people who are never going to walk into a church, and to push a message of peace and coexistence at an age when most people have stopped listening to homilies.
From parish fundraiser to Untold main stage
On 9 August 2026 he closed the Main Stage at Untold in Cluj-Napoca, the first Portuguese artist to be given that slot. He has also played Medusa in Spain and Zamna in Chile, and a Fado EP is on the way, pulling Portuguese traditional music into the same frame he has been using for the liturgical material.
The scale is the interesting part. Electronic music has spent the last few years proving it can hold crowds that used to belong to stadium rock, from Calvin Harris’s certified 1.6 million in São Paulo to festival main stages expanding year on year. Padre Guilherme is a strange but useful data point in that story, because the thing drawing the crowd is not a hit record. It is the collision itself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Padre Guilherme a real priest?
Yes. He was ordained in 1999 and serves parishes in the Archdiocese of Braga in northern Portugal. He continues his pastoral work alongside touring.
Where did Padre Guilherme start DJing?
On deployment in Afghanistan in 2010, while serving as an army chaplain and organising social events for soldiers. He took formal DJ classes after returning to Portugal.
Did a Pope really appear at one of his sets?
Pope Leo XIV appeared on screen and blessed the crowd during his November 2025 performance outside the Cathedral of St. Elizabeth in Košice, Slovakia.
What genre does Padre Guilherme play?
Techno and broader electronic dance music, mixed with religious audio including Ave Maria, church bells and readings from papal encyclicals.
The takeaway
The easy read is that this is a gimmick that got lucky. The harder and more accurate read is that a 52 year old parish priest learned to DJ properly, built a catalogue, ran a label, and worked his way to a festival main stage over six years, and that the collar is the least interesting thing about how he got there. More on his background is documented in his public profile, but the sets speak for themselves.
