Pope calls sex a ‘gift from God’ in Vatican address

SEXUAL pleasure is a “gift from God” but lust and pornography are dangerous, Pope Francis told crowds at the Vatican yesterday.

The pontiff ’s forthright observations were delivered as part of a week-long discussion on the seven deadly sins.

Having dealt last week with gluttony, this week he turned to lust. The 87 yearold said that for couples who fall in love, having sex is a beautiful experience.

“Sexual pleasure… is a gift from God,” he said, before drawing a distinction between that and lust, which he described as “a dangerous vice” and a “demon”. Lust was “odious”, he said, because it often leads to toxic relationships in which one partner tries to “possess”, use and objectify the other.

“Lust plunders, it robs, it consumes in haste, it does not want to listen to the other but only to its own need and pleasure,” he said.

The Pope’s frank discussion of sexuality comes after it emerged last week that his head of doctrine, Victor Manuel Fernandez, an Argentinian cardinal, wrote a book in which he described orgasms in graphic terms and characterised women as “insatiable”, infuriating some conservative Catholics.

Meanwhile in October 2022, in an unusual admonishment of Catholic clergy, the Pope said that even nuns and priests watch porn. He told an assembly of priests and seminarians in Rome that indulging in porn is a danger to the soul.

“It’s a vice that many people have – many lay people but also priests and nuns. The devil enters from there,” he told the gathering at the Vatican. “If you can cancel it from your phone, then cancel it, then you won’t have temptation in your hand.”

‘If you can cancel [porn] on your phone then cancel... then your won’t have temptation in your hand’

Pope Francis is greeted by Ukranian dancers at his weekly audience at the Vatican where he condemned recent missile attacks on Iraqi Kurdistan – as well as sharing his observations on the pleasures of sex