Talk about a hot date.
A calendar featuring photos of handsome priests is selling out across Rome, with tourists swooning over sexy snaps of the Catholic clergymen.
The Calendario Romano features a dozen black-and-white images captured by photographer Piero Pazzi and is sold at shops and kiosks around the Italian capital.
Pazzi has been creating the calendars for the past two decades — often selling upwards of 75,000 copies each year.
This 2023 edition, however, is in extra high demand and dozens of vendors are sold out, leaving lusty ladies and lads all hot and bothered — and fuming.
“I’ve just bought two of the 2023 calendars,” tourist Rebecca Shorrock told the UK Times. “But they were the last in stock, and I need three more for presents.”
According to the Guardian, the A4 flip calendars usually retail for less than $10 a pop but are now selling for triple the price on eBay because of the shortage.
While some might say the product is sinful, Pazzi proclaims that he is merely trying to advertise the Italian capital. Proceeds go to a support group for “women and men abused by religious and institutional authorities,” he said.
“It is a clean and honest product that simply advertises Rome and its most eloquent symbol: the Catholic clergy,” the lensman told the Guardian in a recent interview.
“I have never been reproached or called into question by any religious authority for the calendar,” he further declared.
Meanwhile, Pazzi has also faced criticism for repeating some of his images, with the 2023 calendar including some snaps that have already been featured in previous years.
And the snapper also made a shocking confession, telling the Guardian that not all of the divine dudes included in the calendar are actually priests.
He did not disclose how many are actually men of the cloth, but it seems tourists don’t mind — they’re still eager to fork over cash for the calendar.
Each of the men included in the calendar also remains unnamed — proof, Pazzi said, that the priestly pinups are not “products of vanity.”
