Pope Francis: "In Christianity, there is no condemnation of the sexual instinct"

The Holy Father noted, however, that this notion of love requires “patience,” especially if it is “naive,” whereby “the lover does not truly know the face of the other, they tend to idealize them, they are ready to make promises whose weight they do not immediately grasp.” 

The pope said that while “falling in love is one of the purest feelings” there is the risk that it could be “polluted by vice.”

“This ‘garden’ where wonders are multiplied is not, however, safe from evil” as it has been “defiled by the demon of lust,” a vice that is “particularly odious” because it “destroys relationships between people,” Francis said. 

Reflecting on the modern paradigm of dating and romance, the pope asked: “How many relationships that began in the best of ways have then turned into toxic relationships, of possession of the other, lacking respect and a sense of limits?”  

“These are loves in which chastity has been missing: a virtue not to be confused with sexual abstinence, but rather with the will never to possess the other,” the Holy Father continued. 

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“It plunders, it robs, it consumes in haste, it does not want to listen to the other but only to its own need and pleasure. Lust judges every courtship a bore, it does not seek that synthesis between reason, drive, and feeling that would help us to conduct existence wisely.”

Observing that romantic pursuits that are predicated upon lust “seek only shortcuts,” the pope emphasized that “the road to love must be traveled slowly, and this patience, far from being synonymous with boredom, allows us to make our loving relationships happy.” 

The pope presented an additional reason why lust is so devious, saying: “It involves all the senses; it dwells both in the body and in the psyche.” 

“If not disciplined with patience, if not inscribed in a relationship and in a story where two individuals transform it into a loving dance, it turns into a chain that deprives human beings of freedom,” the Holy Father added. 

The pope closed his reflection by noting that the “battle” against lust and the objectification of  human beings is a “lifelong” process. However, it is one that preserves “that beauty that God wrote into his creation when he imagined love between man and woman.” 

“That beauty that makes us believe that building a story together is better than going on adventures, cultivating tenderness is better than bowing to the demon of possession, serving is better than conquering,” the pope said.