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The Pope today reignited the controversy over the Catholic church's stance on condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.
The pontiff said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse.
Benedict XVI made his comments as he flew to Cameroon for the first leg of a six-day trip that will also see him travelling to Angola.
The timing of his remarks outraged health agencies trying to halt the spread of HIV and Aids in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 22 million people are infected.
The Roman Catholic church encourages sexual abstinence and fidelity to prevent the disease from spreading, but it is a policy that has divided some clergy working with Aids patients.
The pontiff, speaking to journalists on his flight, said the condition was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".
Rebecca Hodes, of the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, said that if the Pope was serious about preventing new HIV infections he would focus on promoting wider access to condoms and spreading information about how best to use them.
Hodes, the director of policy, communication and research for the campaign group, added: "Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to him than the lives of Africans."
It is not the first time the Pope has made public remarks on the HIV/Aids outbreak ravaging the continent.
Shortly after becoming pontiff in 2005, he told senior Catholic clergy from Africa that, while the disease was a "cruel epidemic", it could not be cured through using condoms.
Addressing bishops from South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and Lesotho who had travelled to the Vatican for papal audience, he said: "The traditional teaching of the church has proven to be the only failsafe way to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids."
He also warned them that African life was under threat from a number of factors, including condoms.
"It is of great concern that the fabric of African life, its very source of hope and stability, is threatened by divorce, abortion, prostitution, human trafficking and a contraception mentality," he added.
More than two-thirds – 67% – of the global total of 32.9 million people with HIV live in sub-Saharan Africa.
Three-quarters of all Aids deaths in 2007 happened there.
Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic church, which competes with Islam and evangelical churches.
The Pope also said today that he intended to make an appeal for "international solidarity" for Africa in the face of the global economic downturn.
He said that, while the church did not propose specific economic solutions, it could give "spiritual and moral" suggestions.
Describing the current crisis as the consequence of "a deficit of ethics in economic structures", he added: "It is here that the church can make a contribution."
Benedict dismissed claims that he was facing increasing opposition and isolation within the church, particularly after an outreach to ultra-conservatives led to him lifting the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.
"The myth of my solitude makes me laugh," he said, adding that he could count on the network of friends and aides he saw every day.
In a letter to Catholic bishops, released last week, he made an unusual public acknowledgment of Vatican mistakes over the rehabilitation of Bishop Richard Williamson.
While acknowledging that errors had been made in handling the affair, Benedict said he was saddened that he was criticised "with open hostility" even by those who "should have known better".
Comments
17 March 2009 3:26PM
Another resounding moral victory
17 March 2009 3:29PM
As if the world needed more proof of how out of touch with reality/ science/ society the majority of organised religous leaders are, he goes and drops this steaming peace of evidence. Check please.
17 March 2009 3:29PM
Well, sexual abstinence is working in the fight against AIDS in Africa, isn't it?
It's not as if millions of people are dying or anything!
17 March 2009 3:29PM
If only we could invent a technology to send him back to the 18th century.
17 March 2009 3:31PM
Cannot say how irresponsible his attitude is. Almost speechless with rage.
17 March 2009 3:34PM
Does anyone expect anything else from these dinosaurs?
17 March 2009 3:36PM
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17 March 2009 3:37PM
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17 March 2009 3:38PM
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17 March 2009 3:38PM
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17 March 2009 3:39PM
The pope continues his obscene war on reality and plays with the lives of others. Abstinence only programmes are not effective in isolation because they do not address the real lives of people. Most people are sexual beings, have sexual drives and enjoy sex and sex with others. It is a complex thing. Sex and love are not necessarily the same thing and sex does not just happen within the confines of a heterosexual marriage. People value sex for lots of reasons and will continue to have it whether you or I or some imaginary god is percieved as dissaproving of it or not. This is the starting point for helping people to avoid the harms associated with sex while enjoying the benfits. The pope wants the world to live according to his morals and unrealistic theocratic rules. His political lobbying and moral blackmail has an effect on restricting peoples choice, in stigmatising sex and expressions of sexuality and in making the use of and promotion of condoms and discussion of sex grounded in peoples reality more difficult. Sure there would be little HIV transmission if we were all to become eunuchs or all remain virgins but this will never happen. Abstinence based programmes are not as effective as programmes which attempt to give people the resources, skills knowledge and support to reduce their risk of getting HIV. Each ridiculous pronoucement by the pope is more removed from reality and discredits his church. I don't know why he is given so much power and influence and why we do not have greater criticism of such ill informed pronouncements on sex and sexuality by an octogenarian celibate religious fundamentalist.
17 March 2009 3:40PM
Too outraged to think of something clever. Down with superstition!
17 March 2009 3:40PM
Hands up anyone who's Catholic and actually supports this idiocy.
17 March 2009 3:41PM
Removing the ex-communication of a bishop that denies the Holocaust, denying that condoms help prevent the spread of HIV/AIDs. This pope is a sort of the George Bush of the papacy.
17 March 2009 3:41PM
Once again, the Catholic Church shrinks their credibility. Condoms SPREAD Aids?
Somewhere, angels weep at the stupidity of the narrow minds of our "leaders"
17 March 2009 3:42PM
I guess it just makes a better headline than
17 March 2009 3:45PM
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the Pope speaks once again with forked tongue.
Of course this is nothing new for the world's biggest corporation that has, for millenia, been responsible for the death and suffering of thousands.
17 March 2009 3:45PM
Eh? Robbie Coltrane isn't the Pope anymore?!
17 March 2009 3:48PM
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17 March 2009 3:48PM
What an ignoramus. Leaves me speechless...
17 March 2009 3:48PM
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17 March 2009 3:48PM
This makes me very, very angry. Any Catholics leaping to his defense?
17 March 2009 3:49PM
Ah, sexual health advice from an aged celibate virgin.
17 March 2009 3:50PM
How can anyone take a person or organization seriously that waited until 1996 to admit that Galileo was right? The present pope is a throw-back to the middle ages but aren't they all?
17 March 2009 3:51PM
Anyone would have thought he wanted AIDS to spread...
I wonder if this has anything to do with fears of overpopulation? Just throwing that out there.
17 March 2009 3:52PM
why don't we have the pope's coffers send the money to help aids victims isn't charitable and christians???or they need people from Africa to keep donating to the vatican????
17 March 2009 3:53PM
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17 March 2009 3:56PM
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17 March 2009 3:59PM
All these comments make me sad. Would we even be talking about Africa having such a bad issue with AIDS, if people had been following the dinasour"s teachings? Who is really out of the touch is the question??? I am proud he is standing up to the people who really don't have a clue.
17 March 2009 4:00PM
You know what? These shoes are feeling awfully tight and uncomfortable, all of a sudden...
17 March 2009 4:01PM
spreading information about how best to use them.
hilarious, as if he'd bloody know!
17 March 2009 4:02PM
I should add the people who have not listening to him and think he is nuts - that way doesn't seem to be working.
17 March 2009 4:04PM
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17 March 2009 4:04PM
Diddums.
This loon's comments are going to end up making a lot of people dead!
I know where my sympathy lies, and if you had an ounce of morality, you'd feel the same.
17 March 2009 4:05PM
It is no wonder that the young are abandoning the Catholic Church in droves. With leadership like this, who can blame them. The Pope's position is totally absurd.
17 March 2009 4:05PM
Average breakage rate of all condoms:
1,168/25,184 = 4.64%
Average slippage rate of all condoms:
636/18,495 = 3.44%
Total failure rate of all condoms: 8.08%
References.
www.hli.org/condom_database.html
catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0045.html
17 March 2009 4:07PM
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17 March 2009 4:09PM
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17 March 2009 4:12PM
Italodutch's point is actually right - what the pope said was true - ie, don't have sex and you won't get AIDS.
It also works for war - don't fight wars and you won't get dead people.
And crime - don't commit crime and you won't need prisons.
Do I need to go on?
Shame he didn't add 'Oh and by the way, if you're HIV positive, raping a baby girl doesn't cure it, you sick ****s'. Might just conceivably have done some good.
http://www.speakout.org.za/about/child/child_infant_rape_in.html
17 March 2009 4:12PM
The pontiff prolly doesn't know what his position stands for. He needs to realise that nothing is permanent or pertinent but change..
17 March 2009 4:14PM
Quote of the day.
17 March 2009 4:14PM
Pope Benedict has done an excellent job! I am so glad that we can now decisively group him with such notable quacks as the scientologist Tom Cruise. I have a difficult time differentiating between Cruise's comments about the evils of psycho-therapy and anti-depressant medications for the treatment of post-partum depression and Benedict's condemnation of condoms for combating the spread of HIV-AIDS in Africa. I pray for a day in which we can be free of such ignorance.
17 March 2009 4:15PM
I'm not catholic, but I do believe that abstinence is not only morally right, it is smart. Imagine how different our global society would be if everyone refrained from sex until marriage. STD's, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, and pornography, would be severely mitigated if not eliminated. Just because many people probably will not heed this pope's wise counsel, does not mean that he is not on to something.
17 March 2009 4:16PM
I agree with the pope that use of condoms will not cure aids and maybe a person who has aids will feel that by using condoms, he will be OK not realizing the full extent of the disease. BUT the use of condoms will definitely reduce the SPREAD of aids. Abstinence is fine but it doesn't work as the only policy, just look at alcoholism, nevermind aids. I feel that more would listen to the church's message if was more realistic in its expression of moral theology. Teaching the positive side of belief gives us something to hope and strive for.
17 March 2009 4:18PM
Yeah, how pointless. They only reduce the chance of transmitting HIV by 92% - at a minimum.
17 March 2009 4:21PM
As a practising Catholic, today's statement fills me with despair. Of course abstinence is, in theory, the answer. But the human condition isn't meant for abstinence, because I genuinely believe that lack of natural fulfilment of the sexual urge is what leads to - I was going to write perversion, but that's not what I mean. Abuse is probably the word.
Zurich 31 -
I prefer not to flame bloggers, but can only assume that you have little grasp of either issues of how Catholicism works with regard to the election of the Pope, or indeed what JPII stood for. Because he also stood four square against the use of condoms. As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith - an immensely conservative body - to which he was appointed by the equally conservative JPII.
As for "impeaching" a pope. This is not possible due to the doctrine of Papal Infalibility. He was also democratically elected by the College of Cardinals. He only gets to leave office on his death.
One lives in the hope that the next incumbent may instigate a Third Vatican Council which will realistically look at peoples' (of all faiths) lives in the 21st century and amend teaching to reflect the fact that women have lives beyond that of marriage and child-bearing and something must be done to impede the spread of AIDS.
Until that time, many of us will continue to struggle with our faith and in the confession box.
17 March 2009 4:22PM
garkpit just read your link - shocking!
17 March 2009 4:22PM
Condoms not only help with HIV prevention they are also a pretty good contraceptive. A couple of million devout Africans who have not succumbed to AIDS putting a share of whatever pittance they have in the collection every Sunday helps the Vatican Maintain its standard of living as people elswhere in the world come to their senses and denounce relegion.
17 March 2009 4:23PM
I can't bear the way people think that Christian rhetoric should for some reason fit in with contemporary thinking. Why should it? And what makes the UK's acceptance standards of 2009 somehow the pinnacle of what the world should aim for? So, the Pope goes against what the liberal west think. That doesn't make him wrong, per se.
Think outside the moral 'high-ground' of the UK in 2009. Which is a disappointing land of binge-drinking, sleeping around and fear to have any strong opinion other than 'whatever people want to do should not be criticised', which is no opinion at all.
People are dying because theyre having sex with infected people. People are dying because they are having sex with people who they dont know the sexual history of. People are dying because theyre having sex with people who have had other partners before them. Not because they don't use condoms.
A valid option IS for people to have sex with just one partner, know that person before they do, and be tested before they do and then move into a physical relationship with an all clear. And if they really arent going to wait, then use a condom.
Catholicism (I am not Catholic) is merely trying to encourage this. No bad thing. And yes they're being unrealistic by not including my last sentence, but I guess that feels like a compromise and discouraging people to strive for their ideals.
17 March 2009 4:24PM
I wonder what advice the pope would give to the many women who have been infected by their husbands? They may have followed the church's teachings to the letter - no sex before marriage, stay faithful to one partner - but it didn't protect them. Using condoms would have.