ROME, June 8, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — On the flight back to Rome from his recent apostolic visit to Sarajevo, Pope Francis responded to a journalist's question about his meeting with young people in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina where he cautioned them to be careful about computers and media.
He said parents must protect their children from the “filth” of pornography and not allow computers in their children's bedrooms.
Computer addiction “hurts the soul,” the Holy Father said, explaining that “this is how in your soul you take away your freedom. You make yourself a slave to the computer.”
“It’s curious,” Francis said, according to a translation of the exchange with journalists provided by Catholic News Agency. “So many families, fathers and mothers, tell me, 'We are at the table with our children and they have their cellphones and… it’s another world'.”
Noting that while “virtual language is a reality that we cannot deny,” the pope said that problems arise when technology “takes us away from communal life, from family life, from social life and even from sports, from art.”
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He called continually being “hooked to the computer … a psychological illness, to be sure!”
He warned that easy access to computers opens the door to “dirty things that go from pornography to empty programs, without words, for example those that are relativist, hedonistic, consumeristic, and all of these things are encouraged.”
Adding that consumerism and relativism are “cancers of society,” Pope Francis mentioned that these issues will form part of the encyclical on the environment to be released later this month.
“There are very concerned parents who don’t allow computers to be in their children’s rooms,” Francis concluded. “Computers must be in the common rooms of the home. These are small aids that parents can find to avoid [these problems].”