It looked like Gay Day at the Vatican when male acrobats stripped and performed topless for Pope Benedict XVI recently.
Here is the official description from Russia Today, a Moscow-based news channel that posted the video on YouTube in December: “A usually staid weekly Papal audience was spiced up this week with an acrobatic performance by a troupe of topless men. The four performers dressed in white suits walked across the stage towards the Papal throne and surprised the Pope by whipping off their shirts before beginning an acrobatic performance on Tuesday. The Pope looked on as the men hoisted each other into the air, one on top of the other, three high.”
The acrobats, known as Fratelli Pellegrini (Pellegrini Brothers in Italian), have performed around the world.
P.S. on 1/11/11
News reports this week confirm that the acrobats are LGBT-friendly. Thanks to the Queering the Church Blog for reporting that “the performers are definitely gay aligned, if not specifically gay men themselves. It seems that they formed part of the gay circus, which performed as part of the Euro gay games in Barcelona, 2008.”
11 comments:
o good god - fact IS stranger than fiction
Actually, the less clothing that is there to slip and slide, the safer such routines are. Of course, our prudish era has a long way to go before we return to the original nude performances of earlier times and places. But any step "backward" in this case is a great leap forward!
Of course, considering the classical nude painting and statuary that abounds in the Vatican collection, why are we even slightly surprised by this?
You’re so right, Trudie, that the Vatican is full of male nude paintings, such as the great David statue by Michelangelo, who is suspected to be gay. Still I was surprised to see topless male acrobats performing for the Pope on video. At first I thought the video was doctored to add the Pope, but this was a real event. As Christine says, truth is stranger than fiction.
This has been one of our most popular posts!
Did this go viral? It should!
The YouTube video has almost a million hits.
Most did not come thru the Jesus in Love Blog.
;-)
Lol. that is sort of creepy. Not going to lie.
News reports this week confirm that the acrobats are LGBT-friendly. Thanks to the Queering the Church Blog for reporting that “the performers are definitely gay aligned, if not specifically gay men themselves. It seems that they formed part of the gay circus, which performed as part of the Euro gay games in Barcelona, 2008.”
Here's a link to their report:
http://queering-the-church.com/blog/ecclesiology-ministry/papacy-ecclesiology-ministry/pope-benedicts-gay-circus-at-the-vatican./
Thanks for your comment, Jacob! Hope it wasn't TOO creepy for you.
David statue is in Florence not the Vatican.
Oops, I got my male nudes mixed up! Thanks for the correction about the location of the David statue.
Michelangelo did paint some beautiful male nudes in the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican.
The nuns seemed to enjoy the performance as did the Pope. Not knowing what the regular content of Papal audiences are I can not comment on the appropriateness of this event. It certainly qualifies as an art form.
I'll take it down a few notches. I've never seen Ratzinger even look interested in anything, much less enthralled and he sure was in the clip. I know all too well the look of an old lecher in lust, and that was it- eyes up and down undressing every inch.
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