Someone in Vatican City had better get to confession.

Torrent Freak has unearthed the download history from an IP address in the Pope’s place of residence and some of the movies are of the porn persuasion.

For a full list of the dirty downloads, go to Torrent Freak.

Rev. Debra Haffner of the Religious Institute told The Huffington Post she’s “not surprised” at the Vatican City findings.

“I’m not surprised learning that anyone looks at erotica on the Internet,” Haffner said in an email.

She also pointed to the Religious Institute’s survey which found that “one in five clergy reported intentionally visiting a sexually explicit website in the past six months.”

The 2012 study also found that “an additional 16 percent replied that they preferred not to answer the question about their personal use of these sites.”

Hat tip: Fark via Gizmodo

Why is none of this even surprising anymore?

kateoplis:

In October of 2012 the Pew Research Center announced that for the first time ever Protestant Christians had fallen below 50 percent of the American population. Atheists cheered and evangelicals beat their breasts and lamented the end of the world as we know it. Historian of religion, Molly Worthen, has since offered big picture insights that may dampen the most extreme hopes and fears.  Anthropologist Jennifer James, on the other hand, has called fundamentalism the “death rattle” of the Abrahamic traditions.

In all of the frenzy, few seem to give any recognition to the player that I see as the primary hero, or, if you prefer, culprit—and I’m not talking about science populizer and atheist superstar Neil deGrasse Tyson. Then again, maybe Iam talking about Tyson in a sense, because in his various viral guises—as a talk show host and tweeter and as the face on scores of smartass Facebook memes—Tyson is an incarnation of the biggest threat that organized religion has ever faced: the internet.

A traditional religion, one built on “right belief,” requires a closed information system. That is why the Catholic Church put an official seal of approval on some ancient texts and banned or burned others. It is why some Bible-believing Christians are forbidden to marry nonbelievers. It is why Quiverfull moms home school their kids from carefully screened text books. It is why, when you get sucked into conversations with your fundamentalist uncle George from Florida, you sometimes wonder if he has some superpower that allows him to magically close down all avenues into his mind. (He does!)

Religions have spent eons honing defenses that keep outside information away from insiders. The innermost ring wall is a set of certainties and associated emotions like anxiety and disgust and righteous indignation that block curiosity. The outer wall is a set of behaviors aimed at insulating believers from contradictory evidence and from heretics who are potential transmitters of dangerous ideas. These behaviors range from memorizing sacred texts to wearing distinctive undergarments to killing infidels. Such defenses worked beautifully during humanity’s infancy. But they weren’t really designed for the current information age.

Read on: Religion may not survive the internet | Salon