Following last weekend’s disastrous peace doves release, Pope Francis on Wednesday blessed a parrot that turned out to belong to a male stripper.
The pontiff initially passed the green parrot, named Amore, while making the rounds of St. Peter’s Square in the popemobile for his weekly general audience, according to ABC News. He eventually made his way back to bless the bird.
Italian news service ANSA identified the parrot’s owner as Francesco Lombardi, a former male stripper and town council leader in Northern Italy who now acts in erotic films.
“It was fun. A sort of mixing of the holy and the profane,” Lombardi told ANSA of meeting the pope, adding that the bird parroted the crowd’s chants of “Papa.”
