Padre Packs Pistol, Super-Sized Persona

"We miss him a lot," said parishioner Maria de los Angeles Guzman. "His leaving had affected the whole town."

Valentina Guzman, another Jaral resident, started crying when asked about him. "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, 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.

Gallegos's towering size adds to his larger-than-life character. So does his manner of dressing; he frequently wears traditional mariachi and Mexican cowboy outfits. He is in constant motion, offering a visitor lunch, tequila, photo albums of his public works and a video of Jaral parishioners protesting his departure. One carried a sign with this message to the bishop: "Change your advisers, not the priest."

Gallegos was reassigned to this town of 3,000 in Michoacan state, 25 miles east of the capital city of Morelia, where men are nearly as hard to find as snow in the scorching summer heat. Most of the men have gone to the United States because there is so little opportunity here, town officials said. One official, Francisco Garibay Arroyo, said his impoverished town wanted somebody who could raise money and make improvements, and didn't mind Gallegos's "custom of collecting guns," even if it was unusual.

But if the priest's removal from Jaral was meant to quiet him, it has only added to his celebrity. To make his point about his growing fame, he tossed two dozen local newspapers on the floor with a loud thud. All of them carried headlines about the ouster of Padre Pistolas. "And this is just in the last 15 days!" he said, adding that journalists from as far away as Japan have sought him out for interviews.

In his new living quarters in a crumbling 500-year-old stone church in the center of town, Gallegos keeps two guitars and has begun arranging music lessons for children. On a recent afternoon, he burst into song, accompanying his own CD playing in the background. He sang with such gusto that people in adjoining rooms popped their heads in, amused that their new priest was belting out famous Mexican songs about love.

"He is modern, not like past priests," said Benita Ruiz Medina, one of his new parishioners, as she applauded his singing.

Gallegos said he loves the Catholic Church but that its leaders need to worry less about his guns and more about the church's more significant problems, such as the recent pedophilia scandals in the United States and the fact that some Mexican priests, including several he knows, have broken their vows of celibacy and fathered children.

Gallegos said he's heard gossip that he's a womanizer, which he denies. "I like women," he said with his mischievous smile. "But I kiss the ladies when I am asleep."

"Having a lot of money and sex is not the way to go. To be a priest is in my heart."

So with a tiny gold pistol on a chain around his neck, one of the many presents he said supporters have given him, Gallegos showed a visitor around his town and excitedly talked of his vision for it. If local hot springs were spruced up, a new connector road to a main national highway built and the facades of 200 downtown homes polished, the town would draw tourists.

"And maybe even filmmakers," he said.