A Vatican official has listed drugs, pollution, genetic manipulations as well as social and economic injustices as new areas of sinful behavior.
Monsignor Gianfranco Girotti said in an interview published Sunday by the Vatican's daily newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, that known sins increasingly manifest themselves as behaviour that damages society as a whole.
"While sin used to concern mostly the individual, today it has mainly a social resonance, due to the phenomenon of globalization," said Girotti, who heads the Apostolic Penitentiary, a Vatican body that issues decisions on matters of conscience and grants absolutions.
Catholic teaching distinguishes between lesser, so-called venial sins, and mortal sins.
When asked to list the new areas of sinful behaviour, Girotti denounced "certain violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments, genetic manipulations."
He also mentioned drugs, which "weaken the mind and obscure intelligence," pollution, as well as the widening social and economic differences between the rich and the poor that "cause an unbearable social injustice."
Girotti said the Catholic Church continued to be concerned by other sinful acts, including abortion and paedophilia.
He said Church authorities had reacted with "rigorous measures" to child abuse scandals within the clergy, but he also claimed that the issue had been excessively emphasized by the media.
