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Vatican claims AIDS intimidation
Pope Benedict - "intimidated"
Critics of his teaching on condoms are trying to force the Pope into silence.
That was the claim of the Vatican, who have just issued a statement denouncing criticisms of the Pope’s comments on condoms and AIDS during his trip to Africa.
Last month Pope Benedict XVI, who is celebrating his fourth year as head of the Roman Catholic Church, declared that condoms were not the answer to combating Africa’s AIDS problem.
The Belgian Parliament recently passed a resolution calling the Pope’s views unacceptable. The Belgian ambassador to the Vatican has also lodged a formal complaint.
In an official statement the Vatican said that it deplored “the fact that a Parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticise the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context.”
France, Germany, the UN, and medical journal The Lancet have also criticised the Pope's comments.
The Vatican stated that Pope Benedict’s words had been "used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the Pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the church's doctrine."
The Church’s argument is that the use of condoms encourages a false sense of security, and can actually increase the spread of AIDS.
It is estimated that there are 22 million people living with HIV/ AIDS in Africa.
