Pope Francis spoke about the challenges facing families, including threats to human dignity such as pornography and surrogacy on Friday.
“We also talk about the scourge of pornography, which is now spread everywhere via the web,” the Pope said at the Vatican on 10 June.
“It should be denounced as a permanent attack on the dignity of men and women. It is not only a matter of protecting children — an urgent task of the authorities and all of us — but also of declaring pornography a threat to public health,” – the Holy Father was speaking to a family association network, the Federation of Catholic Family Associations in Europe (FAFCE).
Quoting a 2017 speech he gave to a congress on child dignity online, the pope added that “it would be a serious illusion to think that a society in which abnormal consumption of sex on the web is rampant among adults is then capable of effectively protecting minors.”
Family networks, schools, and local communities are crucial to combat pornography and to help heal the wounds of those addicted, he said.
“The dignity of men and women is also threatened,” he continued, “by the inhumane and increasingly widespread practice of ‘womb renting,’ in which women, almost always poor, are exploited, and children are treated as commodities.”
The Pope also shared his worries about the difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the “hidden pandemic” of loneliness.