VATICAN CITY — A propaganda documentary currently airing on Disney+ and Hulu showing Pope Francis speaking to young people features a full segment where an adult content creator tells the head of the Catholic Church about her positive experience with sex work.
Pope Francis then uses the occasion to expresses his beliefs about “pornography,” which he thinks produces a similar addiction as drugs and alcohol and “diminished as humans” those who use it.
The Spanish language documentary, called “The Pope: Answers” (“Amen: Francisco Responde”) was produced by the Barcelona documentary team of Jordi Évole and Màrius Sanchez, and premiered worldwide through Disney+ and affiliated platforms last Wednesday.
The documentary was filmed in Rome in June 2022 with full cooperation of the Catholic Church and the Holy See, and features an informal conversation between the theocratic monarch and “ten young adults of different ages, backgrounds and with very different lives and experiences,” according to the press material.
The group included Spanish-speaking men and women ranging form 20 to 25 years old and the topics discussed included “feminism, the role of women in the Church, reproductive rights, loss of faith, the migration crisis, LGBTQIA+ rights, abuse within the Church, racism and mental health.
During the last third of the documentary, the Pope called on Alejandra, a young mother and adult content creator, who spoke candidly and proudly about her experience as a sex worker. This prompted a conversation which involved Pope Francis and the other women in the group — no men’s points of view were offered other than those of Francis, an 85-year old celibate Argentine clergyman formerly known as Jorge Bergoglio.
Alejandra’s lived experience was particularly challenged by María, an extremely conservative Spanish Catholic who made outlandish pseudo-scientific claims about human sexuality, which then prompted the Pope’s militant condemnations of all pornography and some vague pronouncements about the supposed “beauty” and “wealth” of human sexuality.
The Pope on Porn and Sex Work
This is the full conversation concerning sex work in “The Pope: Answers”:
Alejandra: I am Alejandra, I create explicit content for adults, sexual, pornography. I do it on streaming sites, so it’s live. I have my computer and all my things, and I go online. I also have another webpage, an alternate one, like a social network, where I upload videos, I sell them and it all works through social media. Are you aware of that?
Pope Francis: A good thing about the development of communications — the system of communication, what it has to save is the existence of communication, that it doesn’t evaporate. When you communicate through networks, it should be one-on-one, so it should be a relationship, no? Especially when it’s used for work, but also for communication. One should distinguish between the richness of a medium, and the morality of what you do, in relation to your own concept of morality.
For example, if you use the medium to sell drugs, you are intoxicating youth, you’re harming them, you’re promoting a crime. If through the medium you link up with mafia people to create social situations, it is immoral. The morality of a medium depends on what you are using it for.
Alejandra: Normally, I have a number of regular users who ask for very specific things, not always of a sexual nature, sometimes it is very sexual, I don’t know, maybe lingerie or very specific things, like custom videos. But I’m the one who sets my own boundaries regarding what I do and what I don’t, or if I don’t like what they are asking for, I simply don’t do it.
Medha (another participant): I like the fact that you can decide what your limits are.
María: I think pornography is very harmful because, after all, it treats people like objects. Someone is writing to you as if you’re an object, ‘Do this, do that.’ I don’t know if it harms you, or if you’re aware of the harm it is doing to you.
Besides that, it also harms the person who’s consuming that. I’m speaking in sexual terms. That person is being harmed because you, when you — this is cold, hard science — when you have sexual intercourse, you secrete certain hormones that create a bond with that person, so if you’re having intercourse through a screen with a person you don’t know, you’re creating a bond with the screen, or with yourself when you masturbate. What you’re doing is detaching yourself from the world around you to glue yourself onto a screen
I am a Christian and I think your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and you’re committing violence against your body. That is, I believe pornography destroys the person. I truly believe that. Is the only addiction that is treated as if it was an addiction to a drug, or alcoholism, without ever consuming an actual physical substance.
Pope: Obviously, pornography diminishes. It doesn’t help you grow. Those who use pornography are diminished as humans. You gave the example of drugs. Drugs also diminish you, isn’t that true? And people addicted to pornography — speaking of different things — is like they are addicted to a drug, or something, they keeps them at a level that doesn’t allow them to grow.
Woman: In your job, is there or is there not violence?
Alejandra: The websites have very strict policies when it comes to that. For example, there are people who like to see blood. But that’s not possible. You get banned if you do something like that, and they shut down your page and they report you and you cannot open more pages.
Milagros: Do you feel safe and comfortable?
Alejandra: Absolutely. When I turn on my camera, put my makeup on, and I put my fake eyelashes and all that, I feel like a diva. Although, I will say that the character takes over me. I was so shy before that. The idea of sitting here, talking to all of you, would be out of the question before. I would have died of fright. So, the fact that I can become a character, a public character — all my social media is public — has allowed me to take charge of my body and my personality, and become more firm in my beliefs.
Milagros: Yeah.
Celia [to the group]: Do you think masturbation is something wrong?
María: I think it makes you turn inward and isolates you from the people around you.
Dora: In real life.
María: Yes. Because you don’t need another person to feel pleasure. I think masturbation and pornography harm people terribly. They slowly take you down a hole that it’s very hard to get out of.
Celia: You don’t know anyone socially who says that masturbation is something cool, or beneficial? You say you’ve seen people suffer due to pornography, or masturbation. Have you ever seen any positive examples?
Dora: A good example? Of pleasure and sexuality?
Celia: Sexuality
Dora: I think the vast majority of people have masturbated during adolescence.
Pope: I think at this point, I would like to mention a criterion that will help us avoid getting lost in some labyrinths, no? Sex is one of the beautiful things God gave human beings. To express oneself sexually is a wealth. It’s a wealth.
Therefore anything that diminishes real sexual expression, diminishes yourself as well, makes you partial, and it impoverishes that wealth. Sex has a dynamic of its own. It exists for a reason. The expression of love is probably the core of sexual activity. So, anything that pushes it in another direction, that deviates it from that direction, diminishes the sexual activity.
Sometimes, during confession, I’ve heard a guy say, “I’ve done an ugly thing” Those are things about sex, no? Instead of saying “I handled my sexuality poorly, instead of loving I sought myself, I did this.”
So, Catechism regarding sex is still in diapers. I believe us Christians haven’t always had a mature catechism regarding sex. It’s one of the beautiful things that God made.
Alejandra: I want to speak very clearly about this. I don’t feel guilty or poorly about my body, because it’s not the same thing to have sex with my partner — I have a partner — than masturbating, because it involves a knowledge of my body, of what I like. So, if I don’t know what I like, how I like to be touched or looked at, how can I explain that to the other person. Or should I just assume they already know?
So, to me, this job has meant taking down some barriers, and start learning who Alejandra was, and break the barrier of not feeling guilt or fear. And I love what I do.
So, if someone says I’m objectified — we’ve always been objectified, but today I can make money with that. I think this is the best job I’ve ever had. I’m amazingly free to be at home. I’m there as a mom. My girl from the time she wakes up until she goes to bed, she knows her mom is there. I can be very useful at home. I’m not an absent mom, which I was when I worked 8 am to 10 pm, and it was crazy during December. There was a whole December I never saw her awake.
So, for me this job has meant a door to freedom for me. And for me it’s been among the best jobs I’ve ever had, because it makes me communicate with lots of people and I can be myself.
