Associated Press - Wednesday November 6, 2002
Nicole Winfield, Associated Press Writer

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.

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