The Pope must go on some kind of autopilot when he’s blessing stuff, right? After all, there are so many people trying  to get his blessing that it’s gotta be draining. So when Francis saw a green parrot at his general audience on Wednesday, of course he was gonna bless it. And in doing so, he set up the best headline we’ve heard all week.
After Italian newspapers mistakenly claimed that the bird came from a local traveling circus, former stripper and current erotic film star Francesco Lombardi came forward to set the record straight. You know, because circuses are awful, horrible cesspools of exploitative entertainment, unlike strip clubs.
Lombardi told press that he’d been visiting Rome with his wife and two daughters and figured his parrot, Amore, would want to come along as well. Upon seeing the bird, Pope Francis called it a “beautiful gift from God.” You know, like the Internet! Come to think of it, the Internet has a lot of very close ties to erotica as well. You don’t think Francis is maybe trying to tell us something about porn, too, is he?
Pope Blesses Male Stripper-Erotic Film Star’s Parrot http://t.co/ohhPtUkz0Z pic.twitter.com/f6aRNG2RCC
— Daily Intelligencer (@intelligencer) January 31, 2014
Of course, erotic films are probably a lot classier and less hated-on in Italy than they are in North America, and by all accounts Lombardi is generally a well-respected member of Italian society — he even served as head of the town council in Trezzano, where he lives, and his most recent film was directed by popular filmmaker Tinto Brass.
“It was fun,” Lombardi, who also called himself a ‘word champion stripper’ (there are world championships?), told ANSA in an interview. “A sort of mixing of the holy and the profane.”
Hey, even if you’re not a huge fan of Lombardi’s particular profession, it could have been worse. The last couple of birds that Pope Francis hung out with didn’t come out of that encounter doing so well. After that debacle, Amore’s just lucky to be alive.
(New York Magazine via Ansa, image via the Catholic Church of England and Wales)
- But seriously, the Internet. Gift from God. That happened
- The Vatican uses God’s gift of Internet to talk Batman
- You can get time off from your stay in purgatory by following the Pope’s Twitter
