The hot priest

“God bless you, Father.”

“Go in peace, my son.”

Padre Gianluca let out a quiet breath as the door on the other side of the confessional clicked shut. The grey-haired man who had just left was old enough to be his father. Yet, as long as the purple stole rested around his neck, he was the Father.

Everyone’s Father.

And they were many.

More by the minute, queuing outside the confessional as they did every Tuesday and afternoon, when Padre Gianluca Bianchi heard confessions.

If only they’d come to confess.

No. They came to see the exhibit.

Him.

The Hot Priest of Rome, as the internet had christened 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, that photo had been reposted thousands of times and his church had started filling with people who wanted to see him, talk to him, take a selfie with him.

Spend five minutes alone with him in a dark, smelly 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 reprimanded him officially. “The Church needs faces like yours right now,” he’d said off the record. “Young faces that don’t look like our institution is dying.”

“Have you thought about modeling?” a journalist had asked him on national TV.

“I’ve had some offers,” he’d replied. “But then I found God and gave up my life to serve Him.”

And the comments had exploded. Some called him a narcissist. Some called him humble. But almost everyone agreed he was young. 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 an inexperienced priest. 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.

“How long has it been since your last confession, my child?”

“A week.”

“A week?”

Gianluca glanced through the grille.

Of course. He didn’t know her name, but he remembered her. Beautiful. Young. Too young, perhaps, just like him.

He’d seen her before, during Mass, and again two days ago, waiting outside the church as though hoping he’d notice her. He had. She’d been wearing a cream knit top that hugged her figure, paired with dark jeans. Nothing that didn’t belong outside a Roman church in mid-June.

And yet the fleeting realization that she wasn’t wearing a bra had unsettled him more than he’d ever admit, even to his own confessor.

He pressed his ear closer.

“Tell me what’s troubling you.”

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

Lord, not again…

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

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

“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 God keeps testing him.

He'd heard a dozen confessions like hers in the past month alone. They didn’t come to be absolved. They came to be seen. To tempt him, if they could. They failed, most of the time. Not because he was holy, but because he had taken an oath and he was genuinely trying to keep it, despite his twenty-seven years.

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

“I had a dream last night,” the girl continued, after a few moments of silence. “I saw him. I felt him. I touched his hands. His chest. His face. He touched me back. And 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. I didn’t want it to end.”

“It was just a dream. 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 under his trousers.

“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. The other day he just looked at me and I got…”

“What?”

“Wet… I got so wet I had to go home and change. I looked at myself in the mirror and I couldn’t… I touched myself until I couldn't breathe.”

“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 let himself give her a taste of what she asked for.

He shifted in his seat.

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

“I couldn’t. I try to sleep. Then I open my phone and find pictures of him. I rub myself in the sheets looking at him. I grab my pillow thinking it's him. I hold it against my breasts to feel him. Then I put it between my legs… Every time I finish I pray. And then I do it again. Every night now.”

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. Do not concern yourself with my own comfort.”

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? That girls can’t sleep because of him?”

“I think 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 had regained control. Desire had come. And it had also passed.

“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?”

He paused.

“How old are you, child?”

“Seventeen, Father,” she said. “But I’m turning eighteen in two months,” she added quickly.

“I see. Then your penance is one genuine act of kindness toward yourself this week. Something you've been putting off. Can you manage that?”

“Yes of course.”

“Yes, of course, but…”

“Good,” Gianluca said before she could continue. He raised his hand toward the grille and made the sign of the cross. “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. Why have you forgoten 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-believed it.

Although the first part wasn’t exactly wrong either.