Pope Warns of the Sins of Sodom and Gomorrah

Editor: The following is a google of Vaticanist Tornielli's account of Pope Benedict XVI's address during his general audience today.  If there are but ten good men left, God is good enough to work from that to save the city of man from utter destruction.  It is not only a warning, but a sign of love and healing.

Evil "is not acceptable," but "the Lord does not want the death of the wicked, but that he be converted and live; his desire is always to forgive, save, create, transform evil into good." This was explained by Benedict XVI during the general audience today, commenting on the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities where rampant immorality, for the sake of which Abraham prayed to God begging him not to wear his punishment in just the name of those who lived there.
 
With his prayers, "Abraham is giving voice to the desire of God, which is not to destroy, but to save Sodom, to give life to the repentant sinner." The need 'to find right men in the city "is becoming less demanding and ten in the end it will be enough to save the entire population." But "there were not ten righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities were destroyed." And this is because "the town were closed on an all-encompassing and numbing evil, without even a few innocents from which to transform evil into good."
 
"It is not the punishment that should be eliminated - said Benedict XVI - but sin, that rejection of God and the love that brings in itself the punishment." It serves, however, "a transformation from within, a few good holding on, a beginning from which to transform evil into good, hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness." For this the righteous shall be in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham and continually repeated: "Perhaps it will ...."
 
"There - Ratzinger has made clear - is in reality ill that there must be the seed of good that can heal and restore life." "It's a word," he added spontaneously to the Pope, addressed "to us" so that "in our town is the seed of good, we do not all because there are only ten righteous people to live and survive in our cities and to save us from the bitterness inside which is the absence of God in the real sick of Sodom and Gomorrah, the seed of good is not. "
 

Hearing these words of the Pope came to me immediately in mind the connection with the incident, sad and dramatic, the Genoese priest accused of abusing children by offering them in exchange for cocaine.