The hot priest

Padre Gianluca sat on his side of the confessional every Tuesday and Friday afternoon, and the queue outside it was only getting longer. They weren’t coming to seek absolution. They were coming for him, the “hot priest of Rome,” as the internet called him.

Too hot to be a priest maybe, as someone in the comments had said when a tourist took a photo of him and posted it online. “I found Jesus in Rome,” she had written, and the algorithm had decided to make it go viral. Within a week, Gianluca’s photo had been reposted a few thousand times and his church had started swelling with people. Mostly women, mostly young, mostly tourists, coming not to confess, but to see him, talk to him, take pictures of him, spend five minutes with him in a dark box.

A conservative Catholic blog called him “a scandal waiting to happen.” A gay magazine named him “our favorite sight in Rome for 2026.” Even his bishop had called him to reprimand him, officially. “The Church needs faces like yours right now,” he’d said off the record. “Young faces. Faces that don’t look like our institution is dying.”

“God gave me this gift,” Gianluca had said in his only interview. “My job is to point to Him, not to myself.”

“Have you thought about modeling?” the journalist kept insisting.

“I’ve had some offers in the past, but then I found Him. I gave up my life to serve.”

And the comments had exploded. Some called him a narcissist. Some called him humble. A few recognized something in his eyes that didn’t belong on the face of a young priest. Too young, actually, to have been given Santa Maria della Pietà, a small baroque jewel in the heart of Rome.

That wasn’t a parish for a young, inexperienced priest.

Yet there he was. Just two years out of the seminary and he wasn’t simply saying Mass. He had also received the faculties to absolve, to guide, to hold the weight of other people’s secrets, a privilege most priests only received after long years of service.

Gianluca had been given all of that fast. Too fast, maybe.

“Forgive me father, for I have sinned,” a young voice said from the other side of the grille. He pressed his ear closer.

“Tell me, my child.”

“I’m having impure thoughts, Father. About someone I shouldn’t.”

Lord, not again…

Gianluca exhaled and took a quick glance at the face on the other side of the grille. He’d seen that face before, during mass. And after it once, waiting for him to exit the church, staring. She wasn’t a tourist. She was beautiful. And young. Too young. Not unlike him.

“Tell me about these thoughts, child,” he said, gentle and professional, like a doctor asking for symptoms, stressing the child.

“I think about a man when I’m alone, Father. About how he looks under his clothes. About how it would feel if he…”

“You are young,” he said. “Such thoughts are not born out of sin. It’s only your nature, awakening. Don’t rush into actions you’ll regret later. Let things take their course.”

“He’s a holy man, Father.”

“Only God is holy, child.”

“Yes. I meant… he’s a priest.”

Of course he is.

And his God keeps testing him.

Not that this was new for Gianluca. He knew the type. He had seen dozens like her in the past month alone. They didn’t want to be absolved. They wanted to be seen. Tempt him, if they could. They failed. Most of the time, at least. Not because he was holy, but because he had taken an oath and he was genuinely trying, despite his twenty-eight years.

Only this one wasn’t a tourist, trying to tempt him with rehearsed, provocative lines. She was genuinely troubled. He could tell.

“I had a dream last night,” the girl continued. “I saw him. I felt him. Touching me. Then we were naked. Totally naked, Father. He was glorious. So glorious I was ashamed of my own body.”

“There is no shame in the body, child. Our Lord blessed it. So does our Church.”

“But what if I want him?” the girl asked. “What if I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want this man?”

“Then you are human,” he said. “Fully, completely human.”

“He entered me, Father. In my dream. He penetrated me. I thought I was dying and coming back to life, over and over. ”

“It was just a dream, child. Relax.”

“I can’t. I woke up from the sound of my voice. I think my parents heard me.”

“What were you saying?”

“Bad things.”

Gianluca was quiet for a moment. He was the temptation. Not her. He knew it. No matter how much he didn’t want it.

“You’re in confession. You can say anything.”

“Make me pregnant… That’s what I said. I screamed it, loud enough to make him stay inside me. Forever. And we weren’t in bed, Father. We were in here. I was confessing first, and then I begged him to take my virginity on the altar. I begged God to make him drag me there and take me however he wanted.”

“You… must pray, child. Ask for His mercy.”

As Gianluca was doing now. Both for her and for himself. And for the unwelcome erection forming between his legs.

“I did.”

“He will help you if you do.”

“I prayed with all my heart, Father, holding the rosary. But I kept seeing him… You don’t know what it’s like.”

“God allows demons to tempt us, child, to test our faith, because He loves us. All of us.”

“Even you?”

Gianluca could feel her breath on his ear now. He was undeniably hard. So hard that if he stood up, the bulge would be visible even under the cassock. So hard that it would make her recite the gospels backwards if he gave her a taste of what she asked for.

“All of us. But we can resist temptation, with His grace.”

“I couldn’t. I tried to sleep. Then I opened my phone and found a picture of him. I rubbed myself in the sheets looking at him. Every time I finished I prayed. And then I did it again. Until dawn.”

Gianluca remained silent. Silence was gold. He tried to breathe.

“Father, I’m sorry,” the girl finally said, when the silence became too awkward. “I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“I am here to give comfort, child. My own comfort is not your concern.”

She made a small sound, surprised, almost a laugh, then swallowed.

“Everyone says you’re handsome, Father. Like it’s a joke. But I think you are more than that. You listen. You care. You are God’s gift to us.”

“Child… Sister. That’s blasphemy.”

“I’m making it worse, ain’t I?”

“You’re being honest. And that is always good.”

“Do you think he knows?” she asked, barely audible now. “That people look at him and feel this way just because of his beauty?”

“I think that God made beauty to draw us to Him. When you hear music, you feel something beyond words. When you see a face that moves you, your soul remembers Him. That’s not a sin. It’s an invitation to love. That’s what I think.”

“You know who I’m talking about, Father, don’t you?”

“That’s irrelevant, sister. If he’s half the priest you say he is, you know he will never give in to what you’re describing. But you don’t want him. You want to be close to God. Sometimes, our poor human hearts confuse the messenger with the source. That’s what this is.”

“And what if it’s not?”

Gianluca smiled. He was calm again now: strongly moved by the girl’s feelings. Totally unmoved by her desire toward him.

“Then you should pray for him,” he said. “As he prays for you. That he remains faithful to his calling. That he uses the gifts God gave him to bring people to Christ, not to himself.”

“Won’t he punish me for what I’ve just said?”

“People punish, sister. God forgives. Go in peace.”

“My penance, Father?”

“Just one act of genuine kindness toward yourself this week. Something you’ve been putting off. Can you manage that?”

“Yes of course.”

“Good,” Gianluca said, raising his hand toward the grille. “Ego te absolvo…”

“Father...”

He stopped.

“I… I don’t know. Nothing.”

Gianluca felt his heart swelling. He had overcome temptation once more. He was almost proud of himself.

“Ego te absolvo,” he said again, “a peccatis tuis.”

And he meant it.

He always meant it.

Even when he’d said it to that American tourist who kept touching herself on the other side of the grille. Even when he’d said it to that middle-aged man who’d shoved his face into the grille and said: “Father, I simply can’t get enough cock inside me. Has God made me wrong?”

“God loves you so much that he has made you free, my son. He remembers you, even if you’ve forgotten Him.”

He’d really said that.

And five minutes later the man was almost in tears.

Gianluca hadn’t risen so fast simply because he knew the right people in the right places, as some said. He was special, as others kept insisting. And he half-belived it.

Although the first part wasn’t exactly wrong either.