Buenos Aires, Oct 31: "Church of Maradona" celebrates legendary player's birthday with raucous party in Buenos Aires. Maradona ornaments swung from a Christmas Tree and soccer studs hung from a cross as fanatical followers of the former Argentina international raucously celebrated his birth. Diego Maradona's birthday on Thursday (October 30) marked the start of the year 43 D.D. -- "despues de Diego," or after Diego -- for some 200 Church of Maradona members who met in a swanky club to pay homage to the player. "We all knew he was the god. We had to start up a movement and what better than a Church of Maradona. If we have the god, how do we congregate? As a church," said co-founder Hernan Diego Ames. "That's the idea-- to find a name for this, that in the world of soccer, is the Church of Maradona. It is unprecedented and we expect, from now on, it will continue to grow worldwide as it has been doing." Some 20,000 people from as far away as Iceland and Vietnam have become church members via the official web site, according to church officials.



It has instituted such adapted traditional Roman Catholic beliefs such as its "ninth commandment" by incorporating the player's name or number into her own name and a nativity scene where a suited-up Maradona was flanked by two angels.


A group of men in curly black wigs showed off their "Gracias D10S" T-shirts and a young man played a tango he had composed for the player.


Maradona, regarded as one of the finest players in the game, led Argentina to World Cup victory in 1986, when he scored one of the best goals in the tournament's history in the quarter-final against England.


But his career was blighted by trouble and drug use off the field, and he was kicked out of the 1994 World Cup in the United States for failing a dope test. Maradona now spends most of his time in Cuba, where he is undergoing drug rehabilitation.


Bureau Report