VATICAN CITY: The Vatican newspaper published on Monday good versus evil takes on the Harry Potter books, the fictional boy wizard star of the runaway best-selling books by J K Rowling.

The series drew criticism from the future Pope Benedict XVI in 2003 when he voiced fears over “subtle seductions” in the saga that could undermine children’s religious development by blurring the line between good and evil.

Under the headline “The Double Face of Harry Potter,” an expert in English literature, Edoardo Rialti, argues in L’Osservatore Romano that the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was right to worry. In the opposing view, Catholic essayist and writer Paolo Gulisano wrote that “behind the fabulous adventures of the different characters you can see the author’s anthropological vision.” Rowlings, writing for a “post-modern” and individualistic world, “wants to help the young reader understand that ‘doing good’ is the best thing to do,” Gulisano wrote.

Ratzinger’s fears were contained in a March 2003 letter to German Catholic sociologist Gabriele Kuby, author of the book “Harry Potter — Good or Evil.”

“It is good that you shed light and inform us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect (children) and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it could properly grow and mature,” Cardinal Ratzinger wrote.

He voiced the fear that young minds will “lose the spirit of discernment between good and evil and that they will not have the necessary strength and knowledge to withstand the temptations to evil.”—AFP