Seated in his sunny apartment behind the San Gottardo al Corso church on the south side of Milan, the handsome 32-year-old is dressed in a beige sweater, baggy jeans and leather loafers.
With his large black glasses, you can see why others have compared him to Superman’s alter ego, Clark Kent. He’s a dead ringer for the Man of Steel.
But for the past eight years, Ravagnani has been accustomed to playing a far different role: a man of the cloth, delivering sermons and spreading the good word to Milan’s God-fearing youth.
That is, until now. Earlier this month, he tossed away his dog collar and officially left the priesthood over its celibacy rules.
“I could have decided to live in a grey area and lead a double life, as perhaps other priests do,” says a now-upbeat Ravagnani.
But it was a tough decision – and one that caused an immediate sensation inside the Catholic Church. In response, Milan’s vicar general, Monsignor Franco Agnesi, issued a statement expressing his regret and noted “the suffering that such a decision caused for so many people”.
“But at a certain point,” says Ravagnani, “I realised that it wasn’t right. I don’t agree with celibacy or the doctrine that supports it.”
He has to leave the apartment where we’re meeting, which is provided by the parish, within weeks.
It’s sparsely furnished, but looming over his shoulder is a large bookshelf lined with tomes about Christian martyrs, religious hermits and, ironically, the challenges of keeping the faith.
Indeed, Ravagnani has written a top-selling book of his own, La Scelta (The Choice), about his personal struggle with celibacy and his decision to renounce his vocation.
“I was happy to be a priest but I struggled with my sexuality for many years,” he says. “It was inherently unhealthy for sexuality to be completely eliminated.”
With 300,000 followers on social media, he’s always been a fun-loving priest with a light-hearted side. He has filled his Instagram and YouTube accounts with zany updates on his personal journey.
His Instagram profile has the subtitle “Drunk on Jesus”, and one colourful post sees Ravagnani seeing in the new year with 300 young friends in 2024, albeit without a drink.
“No alcohol, but lots of tears of joy. No smoking, but lots of excitement. No random make-out sessions, but lots of genuine hugs,” he wrote on his Instagram feed.
Ravagnani, who is heterosexual, was born to non-practising Catholics in the northern Italian city of Monza in 1993. His parents – his dad was a warehouse worker, his mum a cook – are still together after 30 years of marriage, but he says he never witnessed affection in his family and had a poor self-image as a teenager.
In his book, he describes himself as a good student but says he felt lonely and unloved by his parents as a teenager. He recalls how he condemned “dissolute” schoolmates, while spending his afternoons masturbating to pornographic videos in what he described as an addiction.
Painfully shy, he says he had a crush on a female companion but never pursued it.
He says he has never been in love and was still a virgin when he had a calling to worship God and enter the priesthood.
“When I was young, I thought I was unworthy of being loved,” he says, with a touch of sadness. “When I entered the seminary at the age of 19, it was a relief. I had never had any sexual relationships. I didn’t have to think about women any more. God was the only one who would love me.
“Maybe if I had entered after a relationship, after a degree, after a job, things would have gone differently. I don’t know.”
Masturbation was his only sexual outlet after he entered the seminary – “My brain was switched off. I allowed myself to live my sexuality without anybody knowing” – but he continued to question his physical urges. “Sexuality was part of my life, my thoughts, my fantasies, my transgressions. It was this contradiction inside me.”
Ravagnani tried to fight his temptations but eventually lost his virginity while still a priest. He bears no shame about it.
“I felt guilty but I was not scared of going to hell. But I know it was a betrayal of my vocation, of God,” he concedes.
He refuses to disclose any details about the number or frequency of his sexual encounters, but says sex made him realise the value of intimacy and his desire to be close to others.
Nevertheless, it took him two years of intense personal wrangling before he finally decided to leave the priesthood.
“I was a priest who used to pray, a priest who used to talk with other people, a priest who went to the psychologist. I used everything, all the tools the Church gave me, to face my problems. At a certain point I said, ‘Maybe I have to understand what sexuality is without any taboo.’”
Central to Ravagnani’s personal awakening was discovering the power of physical fitness. He began working out intensively and promoting vitamin supplements on social media, something that provoked a reprimand from his superiors.
On his YouTube channel, he calls himself “Un prete in palestra”, or “A priest in the gym”, saying his workouts benefited him physically and spiritually.
“Priests are not meant to think about their bodies,” he says. “I needed money because I wanted to make a podcast in order to evangelise for my mission. As a priest, I cannot get money apart from the money I get from the Church.”
Today Ravagnani appears relieved about his decision to leave.
But his very public departure from the Church provoked a wider backlash in a country where nearly 80 per cent of Italians identify as Catholic.
In his book, he said one critic had called him a “disgusting heretic”; another said, “The more I look at you, the more I want to vomit.”
But others contacted him to express their support.
“Some priests called me to thank me and to say that they are close to me, they love me. They pray for me. Some people said that it was the devil’s fault, that the devil stole my vocation.”
During the Covid pandemic, Ravagnani began using social networks in his effort to promote evangelisation and founded a community for young people called Fraternità. Despite leaving the priesthood, he says that he wants to continue working with young people and spreading the word of God.
He also wants to revolutionise the Catholic Church’s attitudes to sexuality so it may one day recognise homosexuality and allow priests to marry.
“Orthodox Christians can marry, evangelicals can marry, everyone can,” he says. “I think we should start talking about it.
“Italian seminaries are empty. It’s going to be very difficult for the Catholic Church because in 10 years, 15 years, there will be very few priests.”
Yet on this, Ravagnani faces an uphill battle. Just a month after his election last year, Pope Leo XIV
reaffirmed the Church’s commitment to celibacy. The American pontiff said bishops must remain celibate “and present to all the authentic image of the Church, holy and chaste in her members as in her head”.
His predecessor, Pope Francis, also reaffirmed celibacy for Latin rite priests while acknowledging it was a discipline of the Church, not doctrine, and therefore could change. But he refused appeals from bishops in the Amazon region to allow married priests to counter the priest shortages there.
Ravagnani says there is too much pressure on priests to maintain a distance from the faithful when they should present themselves just like anyone else.
“People think priests are perfect, that they are impeccable, that they have no room for sin, that they feel no urges, that they are totally without sexuality,” he says.
“But none of this is true and, frankly, it also hurts priests and people. It can happen that priests fall in love
, that they have difficulty living a celibate life, or that they betray it.
“It’s not human, and not even Christian, to think that priests are different from other people. We are not angels.”
As the church bells toll in the courtyard outside, Ravagnani reflects more pragmatically on his plans for the future. He has been told to leave his parish apartment by the end of the month and will have to find a new way to earn money.
He has written several novels as well as his biography and sees plenty of potential for a career as an influencer and media commentator.
But he is not giving up on God any time soon.
“I have to learn how to live a new life,” he says. “I want to keep on living my mission and my vocation. Spreading the message of Jesus. I think there’s a loss of spirituality in our society. I want to connect with the desire and the questions of spirituality in people’s hearts. I want to have an impact on society. I still don’t know how. But I know that what I lived in the past as a seminarian, as a priest, brought me here. I know I have to use my past life as a step with which I can go further.”