Pope Francis on Wednesday said that sexual pleasure is a gift from God but Catholics must avoid pornography.
He made the remarks during a catechesis devoted to the “vice of lust” at his general audience in Saint Peter’s Square.
Sexual pleasure was something to be cherished, he said, but it was being “undermined by pornography”, and “satisfaction without a relationship can generate forms of addiction”.
“We must defend love,” the pope said. But he added: “Winning against the battle of lust can be a lifelong undertaking.”
Apparently, the pope was responding to his conservative critics, who were incensed last week after a book resurfaced featuring sexually explicit content written decades ago by the Vatican’s head of doctrine. The book by Víctor Manuel Fernández, an Argentinian cardinal close to Francis who was already known as the author of another sexually charged book written in his youth, included a chapter describing the differences between male and female orgasms.
