Pope Francis warned priests and nuns against watching pornography online and urged them to delete it from their phones to avoid falling into temptation.
“The devil enters from there. … It weakens the priestly heart,” he told seminarians and priests studying in Rome this week in remarks published by the Vatican on Wednesday.
“Dear brothers, pay attention to this,” he said. “And if you can delete this from your mobile phone, delete it, so you won’t have the temptation in hand.”
“I will not say, ‘raise your hand if you have had at least one experience of this’,” the pope said. “But if each of you think you have had the experience or temptation … It is a vice that so many people have. So many laymen, so many laywomen, and also priests and nuns. The devil enters from there. And I’m not just talking about digital pornography like that of child abuse, this is already degeneracy. Dear brothers, pay attention to this.”
In late 2020, the Vatican was left in an embarrassing predicament when it was forced to “seek explanations from Instagram” after Pope Francis’s official Instagram account liked a photo of a Brazilian model, Natalia Garibotto.
