Believe it or not, in every corner of Rome, a sacred and profane city par excellence, for 20 years there has been a handsome priest who smiles and makes eyes at the visitor. In the Eternal City, cassocks, collars and habits are everywhere, they are one more piece of the city’s landscape, like the domes, the fountains or the cobblestones with the Sampietrini. Some are real and involve the thousands of priests and religious people who populate the city and others are snapshots that hang in the windows of kiosks and souvenir shops. The latter, which are part of a particular calendar, attract a lot of attention.
Thousands of visitors leave the Italian capital with miniature reproductions of some iconic monument of the Eternal City, a package of pasta and a copy of the famous calendar. The official name of this almanac, which turns 20 in 2024 and can now be purchased in advance, is Roman Calendar, but everyone knows it as the “handsome priests” calendar, for obvious reasons. It has gone from being a guide with information about the Vatican for tourists to a souvenir of cult.
In this almanac, approximately the size of an A4 page, each month is represented by the image of a handsome, anonymous priest photographed in black and white. Some wear ecclesiastical hats, most wear collars. They all stand out for their beauty. Saving the distance, there are those who consider it a kind of Pirelli calendar, but with images of the Catholic clergy as one of the most evocative symbols of Rome. “A young and beautiful face is the best option to make the product more attractive. The intention is to capture the interest of a broad sector of the public,” Piero Pazzi, a 64-year-old Venetian archivist, photography enthusiast and creator of the calendar, explains to EL PAÍS.
The Vatican made it clear from the beginning that the calendar has nothing official and that it is “the initiative of an individual.” Although the almanac does not have the blessing of the Holy See, dozens of copies are sold around San Pedro Square or next to the tailor shop that dresses the cardinals, without major problems.
The yearbook will celebrate its twentieth edition next year with the same essence that it has always maintained and practically with the same images that, 20 years ago, made it souvenir star. During its peak, in the mid-2010s, nearly 75,000 copies were sold per year. Although sales dropped with the pandemic, demand remains high. If something works, why change it? That’s Pazzi’s philosophy. “The project has worked well, sales remain stable,” he points out. “They are almost always the same photos, the messages change,” he clarifies.
He relates that it emerged as an instrument to “instruct and help tourists who visit Rome, providing them with precise information about the Vatican State,” with data and curiosities written inside. This is “very simple information, which the average tourist completely ignores.” “Every year, the quality of tourism worsens, many tourists don’t even know where they are, through the calendar, I aim to help them understand where they are spending their vacation and what is around them,” he says. Among other things, in its pages it describes the organization of the Vatican, presents the pharmacy within the small State that dispenses medicines from all over the world, and the opening hours of the museums and the Sistine Chapel. He also offers in loose notes small glimpses of history between its pages, “some, for example, are intended to refute the Spanish black legend,” he explains.
As with the Pirelli calendar, on the surface the images may not have a very clear relationship with the content or the promoted argument, but the product works. “It is an item that works at 360º, for all ages and all religions, it has no type of barrier,” says Pazzi about his calendar, which is sold all over the world. “In the Protestant world it is very successful, I wouldn’t have imagined it,” he says. And he clarifies that, in no case, is it a religious article.
He Roman Calendar can be purchased at kiosks or stores souvenir in Rome and through from the official website, for a price of around 10 euros per copy, although on some resale platforms those of past editions have already tripled their price. Although his images hang on the walls of half the world, for Pazzi photography is just a hobby. He especially likes to photograph cats and also the gondoliers of Venice.
Something similar happens with the protagonists of the calendar, most of them are not professional models, and not all of them are Italian, nor are they all priests. They are anonymous, there is no trace of their name or other information in the almanac, because “neither the calendar nor its protagonists are a product of vanity,” according to Pazzi, but their true identity arouses curiosity. This is the case of one of the favorites, Giovanni Galizia, the most recognizable face on the calendar, since he has been the cover model for years. From time to time all kinds of crazy legends about him circulate on social media. The most widespread is that he is a former priest, now in his eighties, who hung up his habits for love. The truth is that he is not and was not a model or priest and, as Galizia explains in conversation with this newspaper, he agreed to pose in front of Piero Pazzi’s lens because he was an old acquaintance of his. “Piero was developing this artistic project to present Italian cities with their characteristic characters, such as Venice with gondoliers or priests as a Roman symbol. He asked me to participate and I thought it was interesting, I said yes and the rest is history,” says Galizia, who is now 37 years old. “He was very young when the photograph was taken, he was 17 years old, I did not imagine that it would continue to be in circulation for 20 years. “He didn’t think he was going to become such a long-lived and well-known image,” he adds. And he clarifies that the photo was taken in front of a Church in Palermo.
Giovanni Galizia currently works for a Spanish airline, as cabin crew and also in the staff training team, and explains that sometimes he is recognized on the street or on airplanes. “Less now, there is more and more distance with that image in which he was so young,” he jokes. “Having people recognize you is always something nice, I haven’t done anything, I posed for a photo, nothing more, but it’s fun, people send me photos of the calendar,” he adds.
Pazzi explains that in these two decades the technique has not changed. In general, he is inspired by the passersby he meets on the street, other times he receives requests to appear in the calendar and, sometimes, he puts out ads looking for volunteers to take his portraits.
In some months of the calendar there are some photographs that he took during the Holy Week celebrations in Seville, which he has as a kind of muse. One of them caught the model David Ruiz Suárez by surprise, who was not a priest either, but rather a real estate agent and brother in one of the processions and who had no idea that he was going to illustrate this curious publication. “Those who don’t know me will think that I am a priest, I think they should have notified me. I am Father March, I don’t know how to handle it,” he declared in 2007 to the Seville newspaper. “The term Roman is understood as synonymous with the Catholic world, Seville and its Holy Week can be considered Roman because Seville is Catholic,” says the author. And he explains that he often travels to the Andalusian city and that he is always “fascinated by the atmosphere that is created there during religious celebrations.”
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