VATICAN CITY — One of the leaders in the Catholic Church's fight against sexual abuse within its own clergy has called all adult content "a terrible, serious evil" and "addictive," while commenting this week on a current Pornhub campaign to deliver free porn to quarantined people in Italy.
The high-ranking clergyman also called the tube site's charitable offer "a trap."
The Italian priest who made those remarks is Father Federico Lombardi, a Jesuit theologian who served as the Pope's official spokesman from 2006 until 2016, was a key member of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's staff, and is currently the president of the Ratzinger Foundation.
In the latter capacity, he moderated last year's global summit on child protection at the Vatican, which resulted in Pope Francis I issuing a letter reinforcing pseudoscientific notions about "pornography addiction."
Commenting on Pornhub’s offer of free access for Italian IP addresses while the country is under mandatory quarantine, Lombardi said the tube site's campaign “is obviously a trap leading to a greater psychological and economic power in the future.”
“The fact that Pornhub is seizing the opportunity of the pandemic and the greater time spent at home to widen its spread is not surprising at all,” Lombardi commented. He denounced the company's attempt to make its activities “socially acceptable and even useful.”
“This is instead to be denied and fought with every decision, [especially] in this time of pandemic,” he added, calling Pornhub's charitable act something that “takes advantage of one terrible evil to aggravate another.”
After referring to controversial studies about minors watching pornography, Lombardi said that “we all know — and many scientific studies have confirmed — that even in adults pornography produces serious dependency, alters respectful relationships between men and women and has consequences in family life, even violent behavior and other behavioral disturbances."
These pseudoscientific concepts around a supposed "porn addiction" crisis are part of the rhetoric espoused by War On Porn activists.
Lombardi's remarks, published in English today by Catholic news site Crux, emphasized his conviction that a society in which a “pornographic culture is accepted" will never be "capable of combatting in a serious and radical way the forms of contempt and violence against women and in general toward the corporality of others, and — I add — also toward minors.”
The 77-year-old Lombardi has been called "a wise elder" by Catholic media and is considered an expert in pedophilia and sexual abuse within the Church.
Last month, the American Psychological Association further debunked the notion of "porn addiction" by finding a clear correlation between "religious, moral beliefs" and the belief, often irrational, that it is possible for a person to be "addicted to pornography."
In the U.S., Utah-based activists and politicians are currently leading a concerted effort to get state legislatures to proclaim a "public health crisis" around "porn addiction."
Main Photo: Father Federico Lombardi and Pope Francis I at last year's Vatican summit on sexual abuse and technology.