VATICAN (CNS) Pornography is a danger to public health, and it threatens the dignity of all men and women, Pope Francis said in an address to members of the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe during an audience in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall on June 10.
“The dignity of men and women is also threatened by the inhumane and increasingly widespread practice of ‘wombs for rent,’ in which women, almost always poor, are exploited, and children are treated as commodities,” he said.
The pope said, “The scourge of pornography, now distributed everywhere over the Internet, must be denounced as a permanent attack on the dignity of men and women.”
He said, “It is not only a matter of protecting children, which is an urgent task for authorities and all of us, but also of declaring pornography a threat to public health.”
The pope remarked that “We would be seriously deluding ourselves were we to think that a society where an abnormal consumption of sex on the Internet is rampant among adults could be capable of effectively protecting minors,” quoting remarks he made in 2017 to a congress on child dignity in the digital world.
“Networks of families, in cooperation with schools and local communities, are key to preventing and combating this scourge and healing the wounds of those caught in the spiral of addiction,” he told federation members.
The pope reminded members of their obligation “to give witness to unity and work for a peace that would be that great peace, at this moment in history when, unfortunately, there are many threats, and it is necessary to focus on what unites and not on what divides.”
