THE future leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland has called for parents to take more responsibility for controling what young people are accessing on the internet.

Archbishop Eamon Martin, who will succeed Cardinal Sean Brady later this year, said many parents are increasingly aware of how susceptible their young people are to pornography online.

"We need to educate young people to use the internet responsibly and put in place boundaries that give parents more control over what young people have access to," he told the Irish Independent.

He said both the church and society had to evaluate the impact of digital media "to accept and harness the wonderful potential that is there", but also to "be aware of the dangers particularly for young people".

"I know from my experience working in a school that this can be a great concern to parents, particularly of teenagers or older children," he said.

Dr Martin suggested that parents needed to talk offline to their children in order to help them to be safe online.

Speaking at the annual Soul Waves Radio conference in Dublin with the Church of Ireland Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe Dr Trevor Williams, Dr Martin called for the church to give soul to the internet as part of its mission of evangelisation.

"We can see how lost that world can be with the pervasive prevalence of pornography polluting the spirit of so many of people – where human sexuality is degraded and relationships are cosmetic," he said.

Irish Independent