While rugby players are all the rage in the calendar business these days, Italian photographer Piero Pazzi and his Vatican beefcake calendar featuring hunky Roman Catholic seminarians have generated such an international buzz that Rizzoli recently bought the rights for an American edition.
The shots “are mostly pictures of real priests, which I take during my travels. But sometimes I do get Catholic priests who respond to the casting call,” says Pazzi. “I pick them young to signal that their calling is still very much alive.”
Finding real priests for Calendario Romano is certainly no easy task, and the 2009 edition recycles a few faces seen in 2008. However, with casting calls in four languages posted on his website, and a tacit Holy See seal of approval — copies of the calendar were being handed out in June by organizers of World Youth Day in Australia — the 2010 edition should bring a marked improvement to the series.
The 2008 cover [below] will certainly be hard to beat though – we still haven’t quite gotten over it. Hit the gallery for more handsome clergymen.
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