Madrid, Spain, Jan 11, 2007 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- While in Spain promoting his new movie “Rocky Balboa,” actor Sylvester Stallone said he has returned to the faith and decided to make that part of the message of the movie, which debuts this week in Europe.  According to the Spanish daily “La Razon,” the star of the Rocky and Rambo movies has rediscovered God and is encouraging his fans to attend church to help free themselves of the pressure of today’s world and to strengthen their souls.

Stallone talks straight about his conversion.  “The past doesn’t matter. If you look to God, you can be reborn,” the actor says, adding that his latest film is a reflection of the Christian faith, which he lost in his youth.  “To me this film has been guided by the hand of God,” Stallone confessed.

The actor grew up in a Catholic home and attended Catholic schools.  “Later I took some wrong turns when I went out into ‘real life.’  I needed to go through my trials and tribulations before I could be man enough to star in a movie like this,” he said.

“Rocky Balboa” begins twenty years after the fighter’s last boxing match.  Rocky has undergone a conversion, he listens to Scripture readings before each fight, “and that gives him strength,” Stallone added.

“Rocky forgives. He is not bitter. He always shows the other cheek.  Its as if his entire life was one of service to others. The movie is about redemption, not only Balboa’s redemption but of Stallone himself,” the actor emphasized.

“Most of my previous films were bloody,” he continued.  “They were the creative results of my youth, when my marriage was not going well and I felt myself seduced by the temptations of Hollywood,” Stallone told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Today he is in a stable marriage and has a completely different relationship with Jesus.  “When I go to church and I deepen my belief in Jesus and I hear his Word, at the same time that I let his hand guide me, I see how he freed me from my pressures.  The church is the gymnasium of the soul,” Stallone said.

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