Pope Francis warned seminarians about the “devil” of digital porn at a meeting in Rome on Monday, while also admitting that priests and nuns also fall into the sin of watching porn online. The Pope addressed the topic when asked how a generation of young priests who grew up with social media can use these tools to share the joy of Christianity – reported on the HVG page.
The transcript of the conversation at the event was published by the Vatican on Wednesday. This shows that the Pope did not ask those present to raise their hands if they had had such an experience, but assumed that perhaps all of them had already had such an experience or temptation. “It’s a crime that a lot of people commit. Many laymen and many laywomen, but also priests and nuns. The devil enters from there,” said the head of the church, asking the students to pay attention to this.
The 85-year-old pope also said that although he has 64.3 million followers on Twitter, he himself does not use social networking sites because, he said, “it came too late.” A dedicated team is available to manage his channels. The Guardian’s report also notes that this sometimes had embarrassing consequences, at the end of 2020, for example, the Vatican had to explain itself after the official Instagram page of Pope Francis liked a photo of a Brazilian model, Natalia Garibotto. Social media is just like that: Garibotto’s managers then took advantage of the buck and indicated with a report that the model had received the Pope’s official blessing.
He also warned them not to do this again.