Brother Cesare Bonizzi is a 62 year-old Capuchin monk. He has a long white beard, lives in the small friary of Musocco near Milan, wears a traditional Capuchin brown habit, and sings in a heavy metal band. Yes, way.
The newly-styled Fratello Metallaro has earnt himself a Wikipedia entry and cites as influences the bands Metallica and, perhaps appropriately for a man of the cloth, Megadeath. Gregorian chant just doesn't cut it for Bonizzi: "Metal is the most energetic, vital, deep and true musical language that I know."
He has just performed in Italy's biggest heavy metal festival, Gods of Metal, where he sported full Franciscan habit and frequently made the sign of the horns. This offensive hand-gesture is common in Italy (suggesting cuckoldry) and in heavy metal music (denoting devil-worship.) It also appears on the cartoon cover of the Beatles' 1968 album 'Yellow Submarine', though John Lennon apologists (for it is his cartoon who makes the gesture) have suggested that the cartoonist mis-drew the sign-language for 'love'.
Bonizzi is going with the 'love' connotation of the gesture he makes, though he may have more trouble explaining to his Father Superior the spiritual meaning of the "What the f***" he also let slip on the concert stage. Bonizzi insists that he is not trying to win converts to Catholicism through his music, but converts merely to the raw energy of life.
You can enjoy some of Fratello Metallaro's performances on YouTube
Eagle-eyed gesture watchers will notice that the hand-gestures made at the monk by his fans are, indeed, the sign-language for 'love' (thumb also extended.) Gloria in excelsis Deo.
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