Portugal has been expecting Madonna's visit for 20 years. Now that this would be possible, a scandal promoted by a stupid church called Igreja Maná (Maná Church) is stopping this from happening.
Madonna booked a concert in Lisbon for the 12th of September. Knowing this, the Maná Church somehow managed to antecipate their 'religious conference' and booked (on purpose!, many sources say) the dates of 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th of September for the same arena.
Madonna chose to come to Portugal not only to do her mega-show of the "Re-invention Tour", but also to record a live DVD of the show in Lisbon (at Pavilhão Atlântico / Atlantic Pavillon), and also to make a videoclip of her new single in the capital of Portugal. All this would promote Portugal's image a lot, and would please the hundreds of thousands of portuguese (and also foreigners who would attend the concert) who are waiting for this moment. However, Madonna needs at least 3 days to rehearse in the arena for the recording of the show on DVD and also to put up the enormous ammount of material the tour implicates - and only the Atlantic Pavillon has enough space for such an ambicious show with tons of material involved. So, if Madonna doesn't have those days to put the show up and rehearse (and also take care of the DVD filming crew), she will cancel the concert. Still, the Maná Church, although having lots of different arenas to choose from -in which they could do their convention-, they refuse to move to another arena.
According to the promoter of Tournée in Portugal, Ricardo Casimiro, "only a miracle will bring Madonna to Portugal for the show, DVD and new videoclip recordng, since the Atlantic Pavillon administration has until now no plans of cancelling the contract with the Maná Church" and asks the fans all over the world to unite, protest and stop this mess, "which is giving Portugal a bad reputation and keeping away other big artists from coming to perform here. This is a joke!", the portuguese promoter said. "Along with Rock in Rio Lisboa and the Euro 2004, a recording of the new Madonna video in Lisbon, plus a DVD with the show, not to speak of the biggest concert in the world, would bring attention to Portugal and once again improve our image."
Fans have already opened up a petition, but the scandal continues: some members of the Maná Church have flooded the petition with comments like "Go away, whore! Jesus hates you! Maná rules!", "Madonna is a sinner, we don't want Hell in Portugal! Go Maná!" and so on.
Besides the petition, a number of national newspapers are supporting the fans and protesting will take place in Lisbon in front of the Atlantic Pavillon, which has already received hundreds of e-mails of people bashing their administration.
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION!
http://www.petitiononline.com/madonnaP/petition.html
It doesn't matter if you're not portuguese, since there are many foreigners (including brazilians) who are planning to come to Portugal if the concert takes place.
Thank you for your help
Those stupid fundamentalists will have to go some place else
