Vatican Restates Position Favoring
Abstinence, Opposing Condoms to Prevent HIV Transmission
The Vatican yesterday reiterated its support for sexual abstinence and
its opposition to condoms as means to prevent the spread of HIV worldwide,
the AP/San Francisco Chronicle reports. Monsignor Javier Barragan, president
of the Pontifical Council for Health Workers, speaking ahead of a three-day
Vatican conference on health care in Roman Catholic hospitals and clinics
worldwide, said that abstinence is the "only" way to prevent HIV/AIDS.
The Catholic Church maintains that condoms are not 100% effective in preventing
HIV and contribute to a "pan-sexual" society, in which sex is a means for
pleasure as well as procreation, according to Barragan. Health workers
and HIV/AIDS advocates have criticized the Vatican for its "steadfast"
position against condom use, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and other
areas that are heavily affected by HIV/AIDS.
(Winfield, AP/San
Francisco Chronicle, 11/6).
Vatican repeats opposition to
condoms, says chastity only surefire way to prevent AIDS spread
NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Wednesday, November
6, 2002
(11-06) 06:43 PST VATICAN CITY (AP) --
The Vatican repeated its opposition to using condoms as a way to fight
AIDS, saying Wednesday that chastity was the best way to prevent the spread
of the deadly virus.
Monsignor Javier Lozano Barragan, president of the Pontifical Council
for Health Workers, acknowledged that to some, the Vatican position may
sound "ridiculous in the society in which we live."
But he said there was only one way to prevent AIDS and the HIV virus
from spreading. "We say that prevention ... is called chastity."
Barragan made the comments ahead of a three-day Vatican symposium on
health care in Catholic hospitals and clinics around the world.
The Vatican has been criticized for its steadfast opposition to condom
use, particularly in poor regions of the world like Africa which have been
devastated by the AIDS epidemic.
More than 90 percent of the world's 37.1 million HIV-infected people
live in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 26 million
-- or 70 percent of the total, U.S. and U.N. statistics show.
The Church has argued that condoms don't offer 100 percent protection
and only contribute to what Barragan called a "pan-sexual" society in which
sex has been separated into an act of pleasure or procreation.
"In this separation, according to this mentality, it's absurd that the
church says 'no' to condoms," he said. "But we have another ethical horizon:
That is life."
Two years ago, a Vatican official hinted at a possible softening in
the Church's position, writing in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano
that condoms were one of the ways to "contain" the spread of HIV.
The author, Monsignor Jacques Suadeau of the Pontifical Council for
the Family, stressed that chastity was the only way to prevent the spread
of the virus, but that in the case of Thai sex workers, for example, condom
use was a "lesser evil."
Suadeau later denied he was signaling a change.
