Pope Francis recognizes the divinity of culinary and sexual pleasures

Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square, Vatican City, March 27, 2020. -

Pope Francis, critic of “bigotry” which has sometimes made the law within the Church, judges that culinary or sexual pleasure “is simply divine”, in a book of interviews published this Wednesday in Italy.

"The Church has condemned inhuman, crude, vulgar pleasure, but on the other hand she has always accepted human, sober, moral pleasure," said the Pope, answering questions from Carlo Petrini, Italian writer and gastronomer.

"Pleasure comes directly from God, it is neither Catholic, nor Christian, nor anything else, it is simply divine," he emphasizes.

"The pleasure of eating serves to keep you in good health while eating, just as sexual pleasure is made to make love more beautiful and guarantee the perpetuation of the species", specifies the Argentinian sovereign pontiff.

The damages of "bigoted morality"

He is categorically opposed to "a bigoted morality" refusing the notion of pleasure, which has existed in the history of the Catholic Church but constitutes "a misinterpretation of the Christian message".

This vision "caused enormous damage, which is still strongly felt today in certain cases", he laments.

“On the contrary, the pleasure of eating as sexual pleasure comes from God”, insisted the leader of the 1.3 billion Catholics.

In the book, the Pope underlines in passing his unconditional admiration for the film

which takes place in an ultra-Puritan Danish Protestant community of the 19th century, invited to a sumptuous banquet prepared by a French cook who wins the lottery. .

"For me it is a hymn to Christian charity, to love", appreciates the Pope.

The book which contains three interviews (

) was written by the world founder of the "slow food" concept created in the 80s to oppose "fast food ”.

It focuses on Pope Francis' very social vision of ecology, expressed in his encyclical

published in 2015.

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