KEY POINTS:
The fans scream so loud I can't hear the priest and I am front row in La Iglesia Maradoniana (The Maradona Church). The ceremony commences and the faithful recite their version of the Lord's Prayer:
Our Diego
Who is on Earth
Hallowed be thy Left Foot
Thy magic come,
Thy goals be remembered
The lights dim, six men in white tunics walk the aisle. Each man has Diego's
10 on his back. Up front, an altar boy holds aloft a bloody football. The football looks tortured. Blood drips off its leather hexagons. Coils of barbed wire crown the football.
Behind the altar, a huge portrait of God - Diego Armando Maradona.
The man behind me wears a T-shirt emblazoned "The Pope is German, but God is Argentine."
The logo is a stencil-shaped Diego Maradona running full speed, a football out in front. The room is hot, sweaty and smells like beer. Not surprising as everyone has a draft in hand.
All the crowd - 500 of us - huddle around a small stage which lays tribute to the glorious goals and spectacular crashes of beloved Diego. Men's voices echo as they chant.
He was crucified, killed and tortured
Suspended from the pitch
They cut his legs
But he returned and his magic spell reborn
A man begins to cry. The entire inside of his right arm a showcase for a huge, scripted tattoo - DIEGO.
He hugs his son, a boy of 3 or 4 years old who stares bug-eyed at a 2m-high wooden church that is at the centre of the stage. Inside the miniature church stands a statue of # 10, his head held high, his hand over his heart. With the Argentine national football shirt on his chest and his foot ceremoniously planted atop a Puma football, Maradona looks invincible.
The Iglesia Maradona has not yet constructed its own building. It is a travelling display of love and affection, complete with a shrine to Diego. Like a touring rock concert, the icons and statues travel around Argentina, bringing images and videos of their beloved Diego to all corners of the nation.
"This procession is important, it demonstrates how unconditional we are to Diego," said Alejandro Veron, one of the original Church founders who helps run the official website www.iglesiamaradoniana.com.ar
"Our religion is football and, like all religions, it must have a god. We will never forget the miracles he showed on the pitch and the spirit he awoke in us, the fanatics."
Forgive the journalists
As we forgive the Sicilian Mafia
Let us not to Stain the Football
Deliver us from Havelange (FIFA)
Amen
I walk up to the stage, take off my shirt. The crowd screams as I slip on the Maradona 10 jersey and remember my rehearsals.
The baptism ceremony is to recreate the moment in which Maradona scored his famous Mano del Dios (God's Hand) goal by swatting the ball into the English net with his fist.
Referees, stuck with a poor angle, assumed Maradona had used his head, but replays clearly show Maradona punching the ball away from the English goalie, the startled and then indignant Peter Shilton.
At a press conference after the game, Maradona would never say his hand had touched the ball. "The hand of God" sent it into the net, he said.
Imitating the "Hand of God" is now a central ritual in the Maradona Church.
First I come up to a life-sized poster of goalie Shilton jumping Maradona. In this version, however, Maradona and the ball have been photoshopped out of the frame.
That is where the baptism ceremony began. I prepare to leap.
As the ball is tossed in, I jump, trying to shield my hand with my head then "pow!" I punch the ball forward. It works! My re-creation is worthy of a certificate and now I am signed into the register, an official Maradona Ceremony member.
For Maradona Church members, October 29 is a special date. Their Christmas Eve. The day before God was born. To celebrate, 500 of Maradona Church's most devout followers gather in Buenos Aires.
Loyalists travel here from the United States, Brazil, Denmark and Italy - all to salute the shrine and celebrate the Church's 10-year anniversary. Some take pictures. Others simply toast their god. Off to one side is the Diego tattoo competition. Who has the best likeness of God permanently inked on to their body?
The faithful pull off their clothes to display Diego tattoos. They live with their own sense of time and sacred dates. The year begins on Maradona's birthday, October 30. Maradonians don't live in 2009, for them the year is 48 AD (After Diego).
During the services, tiny statues of Diego adorn the walls, while loudspeakers repeat the radio play by play of Diego's greatest miracles - his goals. First "Hand of God" and then the second goal vs England, known as the "Goal of the Century".
The two goals vs England are shown over and over again, proof of his divine abilities.
The 2008 celebration was particularly sweet. Argentine football officials stunned the world last month when they announced their new national coach - Diego Maradona. Superstar. Ex-cocaine addict. Now, coach of the Argentine national team. The fiesty, fire-hydrant sized striker was given a new mission, Argentine national coach. His first challenge? To inject adrenaline into a blemished national squad.
After a decade of decadence, the unstoppable Diego Armando Maradona is back. Resurrected from the hell of the Sunday afternoon TV talk show circuit. Delivered to his true Sunday calling, on a football field, fighting for his beloved team.
Can Maradona pump up the national team? Will he bring a fresh tact to the floundering crew? Most people, even his critics, assume he can. But can the 48-year-old inexperienced coach guide his beloved team to victories on the pitch?
Can a prostitute-loving, coke-snorting ex-player keep discipline amidst a group of 22-year-old millionaires who love to party? Those tasks alone require miracles and leaps of faith.
A poll for Clarin newspaper in Buenos Aires suggests that 74 per cent of the Argentine public did not support Maradona as national coach.
Church loyalists see this questioning as a routine barrage from the infidels.
"We have been with Maradona during the darkest moments and now we are here with him, how can we not be celebrating?" writes Jose Caldeira, the author of a 260-page book detailing the church's first 10 years.
Maradona's darkest moments is code for his ongoing affair with cocaine. For almost his entire career, Maradona snorted his way to both fame and international disgrace. In good times he scored glorious goals. On the bad trips his body swelled up like a whale and he was rushed to the emergency room.
"He admitted all his errors. He admitted that he was a coke addict. With all the cocaine he did, a normal person's body would not have supported it. A mere mortal would have died," explained Mariano Israelit, executive producer at Fox Sports.
In one celebrated moment, Maradona fired a rifle at journalists and photographers staked outside his home. Then he was photographed naked, snorting coke, surrounded by naked women. That scene took place in Cuba, at a clinic supposedly treating Diego for rehab.
But from the bottom, the tortured hell of cocaine addiction, Diego Maradona fought back. He admitted his addiction. Clawed his way back to respectability. And it is that fighting spirit, that passion for victory which makes Maradona Church members so loyal.
"I am the same age as Maradona," says Jose Gabino, 51, a worn out man in the back of the ceremony. "I dreamed of being like him. That was my dream. In good or bad he tells it like it is."
Since its founding 10 years ago in Rosario, Argentina, the church evolved from a small group of friends to a worldwide presence.
On certain days more than 500 people requested membership. "I would guess we have about 140,000 signed up, but once you take out the duplicates, it is probably more like 100,000," says Veron, a church founder.
Professional football players flocked to the Maradona Church. Ronaldinho begged to have his own Maradona Church T-shirt and professional players including Carlos Tevez of Manchester United and Lionel Messi of Barcelona are card-carrying members.
While pro players admire Maradona, the religious faithful are more dedicated. They watch Maradona videos together, organise Maradona parties and follow all 10 Commandments, which range from simple
2 - "Love Football Above All" to the relationship-straining
10 - Name Your First Son Diego.
"My son is one-and-a-half years old and he learned that when I say 'Ole! Ole!' he responds 'Diego ... Diego!' He can say three words: Mum, Dad and Diego," says Lionel Diaz, one of the original members of the church.
"My 5-year-old can recognise Maradona no matter what!" he shouts to me, the raucous 10-year celebration making it practically impossible to talk. "I show her pictures of him with a beard, without a beard, with sunglasses and without, she never fails."
As the service continues, video screens show Diego's best goals and famous interviews. Here is Diego with Fidel, then Diego as he turns the entire English national team inside out in his famous "Goal of the Century" scored during the 1986 World Cup quarter-final match.
When the clock strikes midnight, the calendar hits October 30. Waiters pass trays of champagne, a toast is made. Then the speaker system is filled by the sound, a phone rings. The crowd quiets. It is God on the phone. "Thank you for giving me so much affection and gathering on a day like my birthday," says Maradona.
The crowd erupts. Tears flow. Beers flow. The crowd sings back - "Champions yet again ... Again like '86," referring to Argentina's last World Cup title.
"What you're singing is the dream I have inside of me," says Maradona. "God is going to be with us."
Though he now lives at the centre of his own religion, Maradona was never blessed. Born in the dumps of Villa Fiorito, an Argentinian shanty town, he rose above and by 11, the short boy with the bushy afro was a star on a team called Cebollitas (The Little Onions).
At 15 he was on the national junior team, already a protege, "the Next Pele", but unlike so many precocious talents, this poor kid from the slums pulled it off.
Maradona was always beloved by the poor, working-class fans. As a star at Boca Juniors in Argentina and then Napoli in Italy, Maradona connected to the working man's sense of street justice and fighting spirit. When Maradona was sold to Barcelona, Boca fans invaded the airport, broke through security and lay on the runway.
"The Argentinian is passionate, temperamental, bloody," said Amez, a founder of the church.
"We show our emotions and what we want. Maradona demonstrates that persona on a football pitch. He is the one who never gives up and is always battling.
"Maradona makes us remember those moments, they live in our heart. It is impossible to separate him from these emotions. Maradona makes us feel so strong. That is why we love him as much as a god."
10 COMMANDMENTS
1 The ball is never dirtied
2 Love football above all else
3 Declare unconditional love for Diego and the beauty of football
4 Defend the Argentine team jersey
5 Spread the news of Diego's Miracles throughout the universe
6 Honour the temples where he played and his sacred shirts
7 Don't proclaim Diego as member of any single team
8 Preach and spread the principles of The Maradona Church
9 Use Diego as second name
10 Name your first son Diego
