Sex education that is filled with ideology can do immense harm to children, Pope Francis has warned.

Speaking on a flight from Panama on Monday, the Pope said that children should receive an education in sexual matters, but the content should be ‘objective’ and not full of political ideology, as that can ‘destroy the person’. He has previously condemned as ‘ideology’ the idea that gender is divorced from the body or that sexual identity can be constructed as a matter of personal choice, or theories that fail to recognise the sexual complementarity of male and female.

The Pope also said sex education should first be given in the home by parents, and then be supplemented by schools.