Condoms for Pope in Portugal

posted: 12/05/2010

While the Pope’s arrival in Portugal yesterday was greeted by thousands of faithful lining the streets of Lisbon, there was also a protest against the Vatican's refusal to approve the use of condoms to prevent HIV.
 

The condom protest began as a small Facebook group just seven weeks ago but became a nationwide campaign backed by thousands of mostly young people, in one of the most devoutly Roman Catholic countries in Europe.

"We never imagined that we would one day have 14,500 people supporting us," the campaigners said yesterday after their Facebook group, formed on 20 March, mushroomed into a full-scaled protest against the Vatican's attitude to HIV prevention.
 

18,000 condoms and HIV awareness
Hundreds of young people flocked to distribution points in the capital to hand out free condoms, to protest the Vatican's refusal to endorse the use of condoms as a method to fight HIV. The campaign began when three young lawyers, Rita Barroso Jorge, Diogo Caldas Figueira and Joana Vieira da Silva, created a small group on the social networking site Facebook on Mar. 20. But it mushroomed until it had the support of nearly 15,000 people.
 

"By handing out free condoms, we are raising awareness in the fight against AIDS," said one of the campaign's organizers, Barroso Jorge. Their campaign was "a success beyond our expectations, because we distributed 18,000 condoms in three hours instead of the 16,000 in five hours that we had hoped to hand out."
 

The initiative, which has the support of Portugal's main women's and gay rights associations, among other civil society groups, will continue Wednesday and Thursday in Fátima, and Friday in Porto, the pope's next stops.
 

Another of the organizers, Caldas Figueira, pointed out that in March 2009, the pope acknowledged in Africa that HIV was a global tragedy, but the pope claimed the distribution of condoms has made the epidemic worse.
 

"Our protest was born in response to the pope's amazing distancing from reality and the extremely serious consequences that his statements can cause in the fight against AIDS," said Figueira.
 

Liberalising nation
The pope's visit comes as Portugal, where 90% of people say they are Roman Catholics, increasingly turns its back on the Vatican's preaching. President Aníbal Cavaco Silva, who met the pope today, is expected to sign off shortly a law that will make Portugal the sixth European country to permit gay marriages.
Portugal's centre-left Socialist government has also introduced a law allowing a judge to grant a divorce even if one spouse is against it. The same government, led by Prime Minister José Socrates, passed a law in 2007 finally allowing abortion in Portugal. Benedict sharply criticised the abortion law yesterday, saying public officials must give "essential consideration" to issues that affect human life. "The point at issue is not an ethical confrontation between a secular and religious system, so much as a question about the meaning that we give to our freedom," he said.
 

George House Trust comment
 

Pope Benedict will visit England and Scotland for four days from 16-19 September 2010. The power of social media in raising HIV awareness and activism is clear. Will someone be inspired to use the pope’s visit to Great Britain to raise HIV awareness here?
 

Visit plans

The pope flies to Scotland and sees the Queen at Holyrood in Edinburgh. He will celebrate Mass in Glasgow. In England, he’ll say Mass in Coventry but spend most of the rest of the time in London, with a speech to British civil society at Westminster Hall, and in meetings and services with the leaders of other Christian traditions.
 

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Pope’s UK visit
 

Pope to Africa - No Condoms for HIV

posted: 18/03/2009

The Pope today relit the controversy over the Catholic church's opposition to condom use as he made his first trip to Africa.

The pope said condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and could make the problem worse. He gave no evidence for his astonishing claim that condoms could make things worse.

The late Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo made headlines in 2003 for saying that condoms may help spread AIDS through a false sense of security, claiming they weren't effective in blocking transmission of the virus. The church has tried to argue that condoms are somehow porous to HIV, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that they work very well and are the best preventative we have. The cardinal, who died last year, headed the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family.

Even some priests and nuns working with those infected with HIV question the church's opposition to condoms amid the pandemic ravaging Africa. Ordinary Africans do as well.

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.

Outraged health agencies

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."

"Talking about the nonuse of condoms is out of place. We need condoms to protect ourselves against diseases and AIDS," teacher Narcisse Takou said in Yaounde.

Stanley Obale Okpu, a civil servant working in the ministry of urban development in Cameroon, said: "What the pope says is an ideal for the Catholic church. But he needs to look at the realities on the ground. One should be aware of these realities. In the case of Cameroon _ and Africa as a whole _ condoms are very necessary ... You need condoms to prevent AIDS and for birth control."

Repeating the past

It is not the first time the Pope has made public remarks on the HIV epidemic 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 HIV deaths in 2007 happened there.

Africa is the fastest-growing region for the Roman Catholic church, which competes with Islam and evangelical churches.

Call for economic solidarity

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."

Internal dissent

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".

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