(LifeSiteNews) — On this episode of The John Henry Westen Show, internationally known pianist and YouTuber Brendan Kavanagh joins me to discuss the attention he’s received since publicly embracing the Catholic faith, attacks from Protestant fundamentalists, his Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) chapel, confrontation with Chinese spies, and more.

After Kavanagh explained how he transitioned from working as a high school teacher to a full-time YouTube pianist, I asked him about some of his favorite moments playing the piano publicly. Kavanagh noted his viral confrontation with a group of Chinese tourists during a livestream earlier this year.

“Basically, we caught a Chinese spy in my livestream by mistake. So it turned into kind of like a James Bond film, and we’ve got massive fans now all over Asia. They see me as a kind of anti-[Chinese Communist Party] figure, and boogie-woogie has become massive in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan as a result of this CCP showdown I had about seven months ago,” the pianist said.

Kavanagh then told me that his videos have led to him gaining a sort of “cult following,” so much so that he often gets recognized on the streets. People from all over come to hang around the pianos just to meet him, but recently he’s had more Catholics coming up to him.

“[A] lady gave me [a] Miraculous Medal, a whole family of African children wearing Miraculous Medals turned up at the piano. … We were in the middle of a Novena to Our Lady when this happened. So I thought it was some kind of sign from our Blessed Mother that she was hearing the prayer,” he said.

I jumped in to say how refreshing it was that Kavanagh uses his platform to embrace the Catholic faith, noting how we typically only see athletes show their faith by making a sign of the cross after winning a championship. Still, we don’t normally see anything similar in the music genre. But here he is, publicly saying, “Yes, I’m Catholic,” and that’s beautiful.

Circling back to his faith getting people’s attention lately, the pianist told me about Protestant fundamentalists following and confronting him.

“[W]hat happened was, when I did the tour of my Traditional Latin Mass chapel, which I’ve set up in my stone barnyard, I actually got targeted by a group of fundamentalist Protestants who followed me around London for three days and targeting me, saying that I was supporting the ‘whore of Babylon’ and all this kind of stuff,” Kavanagh said.

Kavanagh added that he didn’t realize there was all this anti-Catholic hatred out there until he received the backlash from the chapel tour video and started interacting with these fundamentalists.

“[I]’ve also now developed, as a result of that, a real hatred for heresy, which I never had before. Because these people … think that we worship Mary, they think that we’re idol worshipers. They talk about the cliches that you hear about Catholicism,” he said.

“And they’re so stuck in their opinions, I actually came out of the encounter with a real hatred of heresy, which I’ve never really had before, because I had it put in my face.”

To hear more from Brendan Kavanagh, watch or listen to my full interview.

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