VATICAN CITY
Associated Press
BY NICOLE WINFIELD
ASSOCIATED PRESS
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis, cardinals and bishops from around the world have gotten an unexpected lecture on the joys of sex, from a Catholic couple brought in to talk about what makes a marriage last.
Ron and Mavis Pirola, parents of four from Sydney, Australia, told a Vatican gathering of some 200 prelates that sexual attraction brought them together 57 years ago and that sex has helped keep them married for 55 years.
“The little things we did for each other, the telephone calls and love notes, the way we planned our day around each other and the things we shared were outward expressions of our longing to be intimate with each other,” the couple said in a joint statement to the closed meeting late Monday.
“Gradually we came to see that the only feature that distinguishes our sacramental relationship from that of any other good Christ-centered relationship is sexual intimacy, and that marriage is a sexual sacrament with its fullest expression in sexual intercourse.”
The audience of celibate men was a bit taken aback.
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