TVnotas Asks Padre Alberto Cutié Why It Is That Ruhama Canellis Is So Chummy With The Paparazzi

TVnotas, the weekly that first ran the photos of Padre Alberto Cutié and long-time girlfriend Ruhama Canellis getting sand in unfortunate places, has asked the disgraced priest why it is, exactly, that his girlfriend seems so chummy with the paparazzo who snapped the photos. The weekly claims they have pictures of Ruhama conversing with photographer Lorenzo Gonzalez, the man responsible for the photos of Canellis and Cutié kissing at a Miami bar, taken about one week after TVnotas was first tipped off about Cutié’s affair.

Cutié says Canellis had told him she had met up with Gonzalez, whom Cutié knew as a member of his church. He claims Canellis was minding her own business, casually blaspheming near her home, when she was approached by Gonzalez on South Beach. Addressing TVnotas’ concern that it seems rather suspicious for Canellis to have agreed to meet publicly with the man who effectively helped ruin her and her boyfriend’s reputations, Cutié insisted that Canellis had no way of knowing whether Gonzalez took the photos of the couple on the beach and that she was not even aware that he was a paparrazo. Canellis, Cutié said, had originally met Gonzalez when both were photographers just “taking photos of tourists on Ocean Drive.”

Cutié seemed to lose his temper when asked whether he believes people might gather that he and/or Canellis were working with the paparazzi, and insisted once again that it was Canellis who had been approached by Gonzalez, not vice-versa, and that the whole situation was already playing out like a ridiculous soap opera. Perhaps something he should have considered before removing both his collar and his mistress’ bikini bottom?

TVnotas also contacted Gonzalez for his take on the story. The photographer said he and Canellis weren’t friends so much as acquaintances, and that the two had initially met about eleven years ago when both were studying photography. Back then, when she was known as Ruhama Buni, the two would go to clubs around Miami Beach, snapping photos of tourists and the Miami nightlife. Gonzalez says he’s actually better acquainted with her mother and brother and that he hadn’t seen Ruhama for three years until the day he spied her leaving her home and approached her for a chat. He insists that Ruhama did not know he was a paparazzo and that the two talked for “no more than five minutes” about him possibly taking her pictures and conducting an interview with her. 

After their meeting, he says,  a fellow pap approached him to inform him that he had snapped photos of the two talking. Gonzalez admitted that the two of them conversing may seem suspicious, but it was entirely innocent. Gonzalez claims to feel guilty about the whole affair, but insists that he was not the only one snapping photos of the couple that day. He even goes so far as to claim that he did not recognize Ruhama as the woman in his photos (taken at the bar) until he say the images of her with Cutié on the beach. 

Gonzalez says he and his family know Cutié well and often attend mass at his (former) church. He says that, out of respect for the priest, he held on to the photos for a while so as not to release them during Holy Week. He says, despite his guilt, he never considered not selling the photos because they constituted a huge story. Gonzalez insists that Cutié has never contacted him about the photos, and that they were not staged or commissioned in any way. He claims he was never contacted or tipped off by Canellis, but he’s not sure if she may have done so with other photographers. He does, however, find it suspicious that Cutié had announced to the media that he noticed a woman snapping his pictures on the beach and that he had been hounded by paparazzi for months, yet did not think to leave Canellis or question her possible role in this.

[TVnotas, print version]