Heterosexuals can also use condoms, clarifies Pope

POPE Benedict’s landmark acknowledgement that the use of condoms is sometimes morally justifiable to stop Aids is valid not only for gay male prostitutes but for heterosexuals and transsexuals too, the Vatican said yesterday.

The clarification, the latest step in what is already seen as a significant shift in the Catholic Church policy, came at a news conference presenting the Pope’s new book: Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times.

In the book, a long interview with German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald, the Pope used the example that a male prostitute would be justified using a condom to avoid transmitting the killer disease.

The clarification was necessary because the German, English and French versions of the book used the male article when referring to a prostitute but the Italian version used the female article.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said he asked the Pope directly to clarify his thinking.

“I asked the Pope personally if there was a serious distinction in the choice of male instead of female and he said ‘no’,” Lombardi said.

“The point is the use of a condom should be a first step toward responsibility in being aware of the risk of the life of the other person one has relations with,” Lombardi said.

“If it is a man, a woman or a transsexual who does it, we are always at the same point, which is the first step in responsibly avoiding passing on a grave risk to the other.”

The Church had been saying for decades condoms were not even part of the solution to fighting Aids, even though no formal policy on this existed in a Vatican document.

The late cardinal John O’Connor of New York famously branded the use of condoms to stop the spread of Aids as the Big Lie.

In the book, the Pope says the use of condoms could be seen as “a first step toward moralisation”, even though condoms are “not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection”.

After the Pope first mentions that the use of condoms could be justified in certain limited cases, the author, Seewald asks: “Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?”

The Pope answers: “It of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”

The Pope’s words and Lombardi’s explanation — while not changing the Catholic ban on contraception — were nonetheless greeted as a breakthrough by liberal Catholics, Aids activists and health officials.

Meanwhile, an estimated 33.3 million people worldwide have the HIV virus that causes Aids, but the global health community is starting to slow down and even turn the epidemic around, a recent UN report said.

The number of HIV-infected people in 2009 was down slightly from the previous year’s 33.4 million.