BOCA RATON, Florida (CNS): Fame brought drugs and the fast life for many pop stars decades ago, but for the singer known as Dion it also came with an emptiness and a voracious hunger for more.
“I was always seeking,” said Dion DiMucci, now 67 years old and a member of St Jude Parish in Boca Raton, Florida.
“In the ’60s, I used to pray, ‘God, I want to know the truth. Why am I here? I am open and I am ready’,” he told the Florida Catholic newspaper.
“I had a powerful religious experience,” he said. “It changed my life and I have never been the same since.”
DiMucci believes that experience has given him the secret to peaceful living and a good life, and he wants to share his insights with men and teenage boys.
So the artist, who is up for a Grammy for his latest album, Bronx in Blue, does so at events such as a Spiritual Rally for Men planned for March in Palm Beach, Florida.
DiMucci is a lifelong Catholic from a big Italian family in the Bronx borough of New York City.
He began his music career in the 1950s with Dion and the Belmonts, with hits including I Wonder Why and A Teenager in Love.
DiMucci went solo in the early 1960s rising to the top with hits such as Runaround Sue and The Wanderer.
Once he embraced his Catholicism, his love of the faith led him into Christian music and five gospel albums.
