Objectifying holy men is a slippery slope since the fear of God may keep people from playing out their fantasies. A 60-year-old Venetian photographer, Piero Pazzi, walks around the sacred grounds with his camera for visual content to go in the “Calendario Romano.” That’s the official name for the hot priest calendar and it has been a longstanding publication for 20 years.
Each month of the flip calendar is represented by an anonymous priest photographed in black and white near or in a church. They each don all sorts of accessories from wide-brimmed hats to clerical collars. Regardless of what they wear, they are all deemed “hot.”
This calendar is entertaining for the female gaze with the priests’ symmetrical faces along with the maturity and wisdom oozing out of their pores. These men are truly god sent.
According to Piero Pazzi, the calendar is a “clean and honest product that simply advertises Rome and its most eloquent symbol: the Catholic clergy.”
Don’t dart to churches in Rome to lockdown these holy men. This is a disclaimer: “They are not all priests and they are not all from Italy.” He uses a Fuji camera and photographs the men during trips to the cities during Easter. The models come out of a random process of selection.