To honor the pontiff’s visit to the United States this week, New York pizza chef Tony Salihaj worked for hours—days maybe, who knows—recreating Pope Francis’s face with cheese and sauce for a special papal pizza.

“We want to do something special for the Pope, he’s coming back to the city,” Salihaj, the pizza chef at Bleeker Street Pizza in the West Village, told WABC, which glowingly described Salihaj’s creation as “unexpected.”



Salihaj spent five hours crafting the pie pictured above, using anchovies for Christ, what looks like vodka sauce for his Holiness’s skin, plus mozzarella, ricotta, and green and red peppers for the robe and ornaments.

Much like the pope would do if he’d put himself on a pizza, Salihaj humbly brushed aside praise for his creation.

“We’re pizza men, we’re not artists,” he said. Tony, we disagree—you’re both.

