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A long-running Roman souvenir known as the Calendario Romano — popularly dubbed the “hot priest” calendar — has been revealed to feature models who are not always clergy.
Italian newspaper La Repubblica identified the cover face, Giovanni Galizia, now 39 and a flight attendant in Verona, as a 17-year-old model who posed in priestly attire for photographer Piero Pazzi more than two decades ago.
Galizia’s portrait has been reused on several editions of the primarily black-and-white calendar, which Pazzi produces independently of the Vatican.
Pazzi says around one-third of this year’s subjects are genuine priests but declined to specify which.
The calendar sells for about €8 in tourist shops around the Vatican and Pazzi estimates several thousand copies per year.
The Vatican has declined to comment.
Galizia says he signed a release and received no payment; the photographer defends the project as artistic, noting it plays on contrasts between the sacred and the secular.
The revelation has drawn attention across Italian and international media to the calendar’s authenticity and the overlap of religion, tourism and souvenir culture in Rome.
🔗 Based On
The Sydney Morning HeraldUnholy deception: Rome’s ‘sexy priest’ calendar star never set foot in a seminary
The Times and The Sunday TimesHot priest is not priest? Papal pin-up is an immaculate deception
Euro Weekly News – leading English language newspaper in SpainFamed for being the most handsome pin-up cleric on the Italian calendar, yet never been a cleric


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