Diego Armando Maradona e il culto del D10S: 1960-∞

This article examines the sacralization of Diego Armando Maradona and the development of the cult of D10S as expressions of popular and postmodern religiosity. Beginning with the mythical construction of the pibe—a central figure in the Argentine imagination associated with talent, transgression, social redemption, and the ability to turn defeat into victory—the study traces Maradona’s transformation from sporting hero into a global religious icon. Particular attention is devoted to the Maradonian Church, founded in Rosario in 1998, through an analysis of its liturgical calendar, mythical framework, pilgrimage sites, prayers, commandments, and rites of initiation, marriage, and commemoration. Although it creatively and sometimes parodically reworks forms derived from Christianity, the cult possesses a coherent symbolic and ritual system capable of generating belonging, shared memory, and collective identity. The phenomenon is situated within the decline of institutional religious practice and the simultaneous “re-enchantment” of society, especially in contexts marked by economic vulnerability, social marginality, and political crisis. Maradona consequently takes on the features of a popular saint who is close, human, and accessible, embodying fragility, suffering, and social redemption. The Maradonian cult may therefore be interpreted as an autonomous form of popular religion that remains in constant dialogue with the Catholic imagination and expresses a religiosity based more on proximity, participation, and the salvation of the self than on a universal eschatological project.