Sexual pleasure a gift from god: Pope Francis

Rome: Pope Francis, spiritual leader of the Catholic church, said on Wednesday that sexual pleasure is god’s gift, but Catholics must avoid pornography, The Guardian reported.

The supreme pontiff was addressing his general audience at Saint Peter’s Square during a catechesis devoted to the “vice of lust”.

The Pope said that sexual pleasure was something to be cherished, but pornography undermines it. He said that satisfaction without a relationship could generate forms of addiction.

He said that one must defend love but warned that winning the battle of lust “can be a lifelong undertaking”, The Guardian quoted him. According to the news agency, the Pope was responding to his conservative critics who were angered by a resurfacing of a book that features sexually explicit content and was authored by the Vatican’s head of doctrine decades ago. The book was written by a cardinal based in Argentina, and he was noted for his other sexually charged book. This book reportedly distinguishes between male and female orgasms.

The most recent scandal was the author of the sexually explicit books, Víctor Manuel Fernández, getting appointed to the Vatican’s most powerful position.

During a talk with seminarians about the dangers of social media in 2022, the Pope mentioned the harms of digital pornography and admitted that priests and nuns also watch online porn.

The Guardian reports another incident from 2020 in which the Vatican was taken to an embarrassing point. The social media accounts belonging to the Pope, but managed by a team, ‘Liked’ a photo of the Brazilian model Natalia Garibotto. The photo stayed liked for several days, too.