SAO PAULO, Brazil -- His CD is at the top of the charts with 3.2 million copies sold, the kind of showing normally reserved for samba greats.

He is the hottest thing on television, drawing sky-high ratings that have executives begging him to sign a contract for his own show. His boyish face outsells Leonardo DiCaprio and Brazil's scantily clad dancing girls at the magazine stands, and his songs are de rigueur at the top nightclubs.

Last month at Carnival, his dancing atop a huge sound truck drew 100,000 adoring fans, including hordes of women swooning from more than just the heat.

"He's such a hunk," said Adriana Rodrigues, a 21-year-old accounting student with a low-cut skintight white blouse and a dolphin tattoo on her shoulder. "Have you seen him? He's really gorgeous."

That Marcelo Rossi, 31, is a Roman Catholic priest doesn't seem to slow anybody down, least of all the priest himself.

"I'm not an idol; I'm a priest," insists the former aerobics instructor with close-cropped brown hair, blue eyes and a broad smile. "My aim is to bring Catholics back to the church."

Has he ever. Brazil, the largest Roman Catholic country in the world, with 83 percent of 160 million Brazilians self-proclaimed Catholics, until recently had one of the lowest rates of church attendance, with around 4 percent of Catholics going to services each week. Now, since Rossi has taken to the stage in six weekly Masses plus radio, television and variety show programs, attendance has grown to 10 percent, according to a survey by the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics.

Church leaders are looking at his success as a possible model for Catholic renovation in the rest of Brazil and perhaps worldwide.

"You can't deny that to be Catholic is cool now," said Brazil's Life Is Faith magazine recently. "Marcelo Rossi, the highest expression of the charismatic renovation in Brazil, has accomplished what many priests have tried over the years -- bringing Catholics back to the church."

Evangelical Protestant pastors, who had made huge progress in recent years converting lapsed Brazilian Catholics, are fuming. Rossi's charismatic Catholic Masses, they say, are stolen from their own services, which generally combine dancing and singing with casting out devils.

The pop-star priest, who fills his Masses with singing and follows them with what he calls "The Lord's Aerobics," insists that charismatic services are as old as Catholicism and that he wants no trouble with the evangelicals.

"I don't want war," he said in an interview. "On the contrary, I love the church, and my aim is to bring back the Catholics who are distanced."

Rossi, raised with a fondness for pizza and Bruce Lee movies in the middle-class Sao Paulo neighborhood of Santana, never intended to become a priest. He finished a degree in physical education, got engaged and was spending 14 hours a day at the gym -- "I was a young narcissist," he admits -- when tragedy changed his life.

A cousin whom Rossi considered a brother died in a wreck with a drunken driver. The same day an aunt was found to have a tumor. Searching for answers, Rossi returned to church prayer groups, studied Scripture "and fell in love," he remembers.

After emerging from theology school, he experimented with a new kind of Mass, incorporating the energy of his former aerobics studio into the services. He asked followers to use a Byzantine rosary, which allows completion of a round of prayers in 10 minutes, down from 30 or more.

"Today people don't have too much time and we have to think of that," he said.

The response was electric. Soon his church on Sao Paulo's south side was packed beyond capacity. Last July the parish rented a former bottle factory in the city's industrial zone, knocked down the exterior walls and moved Masses to its huge concrete floor, still marked with yellow stripes from the factory line.

Today the factory grounds resemble a rough theme park, with souvenir and food stands sprinkled around the bare earth and gravel parking lot. There's a lost and found stand -- a delightful touch -- and an information booth.

Outside the main gates, hawkers rent plastic chairs for $1 and sell hot dogs and candied apples, rosaries, votive candles, T-shirts and Divine Light mini-flashlight key chains bearing the grinning priest's face.

"You can't imagine how many young people are coming to the church now," marveled Maria Custodia, a rosary and candy vendor.

Inside, up to 20,000 people pack each service -- an estimated 60,000 listen on radio -- as Rossi says Mass on a 10-foot-high white stage. An electric guitarist, drummer and backup singers in white robes help out, along with up to 80 other priests and 1,000 crowd control officers.

The pale 6-foot-4 priest, clad in a long white robe, strides onto stage to applause from the mob below. He quickly launches into one of his hits, "Raise Your Hands," smiling warmly and holding his microphone out to the crowd.

Followers raise their arms and dance gently in the steamy morning heat. Little girls in puffy dresses bounce on their fathers' shoulders.

Carolina Silva, 16, who sports a gold Jesus medal tucked under her black T-shirt, admits she has cut class with a group of friends to see Brazil's most famous priest.

"He's so animated! It's like coming to a show," she said, smiling shyly. "And this way I can tell my mother I cut class. You think she's going to complain when I tell her I cut to go to Mass?

"The whole school's crazy about him. We came once and met 20 other students from school here."

In Rossi's Mass, prayers and sermons follow the rules of Catholic Mass but are relatively brief and always interspersed with music. The heartthrob priest descends with a huge gold sunburst Byzantine cross to walk through the crowd, blessing candles and photos of loved ones. Cameras flash and tears of emotion fall.

"I think it's marvelous," said Laurita Pedrosa, 70, a gray-haired woman with a deeply lined face, watching from a plastic chair at the rear of the crowd. "He's going to succeed in revitalizing the church."

Before Rossi began his Masses, "I was sitting at home dying," she said, disillusioned after an abusive marriage. Now, every week she takes a two-hour bus ride to the church, and "I feel alive. He's gotten me out of the house and back into life."

At the Mass' end, Rossi's assistants take up buckets of holy water and dash them over the screaming crowd below. The young priest waves his arms skyward and hops to "The Lord's Aerobics" as white-robed altar boys and girls leap into the air.

"Jesus Christ lives! Jesus Christ lives!" the crowd shouts.

Jose de Souza, a 60-year-old with close-cropped gray hair and cowboy boots beneath his jeans, grins and dances wildly, arms in the air.

"You leave here feeling so happy!" he said. "I'm coming back this afternoon. I really like this guy!"

Rossi's pop-star fame has admittedly brought him -- and the church -- some headaches.

His top-selling CD, "Music to Praise the Lord," is being pirated. Sao Paulo police recently shut down "I hate Father Marcelo Rossi," a defamatory Internet site. The priest has offended homosexuals by suggesting that their orientation is the result of overprotective mothers and absent fathers.

While he has appeared on numerous Sunday variety shows better known for spandex-clad dancers and midget wrestling, he recently declined to appear alongside three nude models and Tiazinha, Brazil's other star of the moment, a masochistic TV host in black lingerie, mask and whip.

Bishops of his own church have questioned his style of worship and his media exposure. Still, "Christ himself, if he were here today, would be nothing without the newspapers, radio and television," admitted conservative Cardinal Serafim Araujo of Belo Horizonte. "One must use them."

Rossi's popularity shows little sign of dimming. His top songs have been remixed as disco hits recently and made their way into Brazil's nightclubs and Carnival schools.

"My aim is evangelizing," he said. "I wanted to go into places where religion has never gone and thank the Lord, God has opened wonderful doors."

Pub Date: 4/03/99