Vatican blasts Belgian attempt to `intimidate’ pope

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Denouncing what it characterized as an organized effort to “intimidate” Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican on Friday (Apr. 17) strongly criticized Belgian lawmakers for condemning the pope’s recent statement that condoms aggravate the spread of HIV/AIDS. On a flight to the African country of Cameroon last month, the pope told reporters that […]

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Denouncing what it characterized as an organized effort to “intimidate” Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican on Friday (Apr. 17) strongly criticized Belgian lawmakers for condemning the pope’s recent statement that condoms aggravate the spread of HIV/AIDS.

On a flight to the African country of Cameroon last month, the pope told reporters that “one cannot overcome the problems (of AIDS) with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, they increase the problem.”

Catholic teaching forbids the use of artificial birth control, including condoms, and Catholic aid agencies promote abstinence in their efforts against HIV/AIDS.


On April 2, the parliament in predominantly Catholic Belgium voted 95-18 to ask its government to “condemn the unacceptable statements of the Pope on the occasion of his journey to Africa and to protest officially to the Holy See.”

The Belgian ambassador to the Holy See personally delivered the message to the Vatican on Wednesday (April 15).

Using unusually strong language for the normally staid discourse of diplomacy, the Vatican Secretariat of State on Friday expressed “regret” at the Belgian resolution, which it called “unusual.”

The statement said that the Vatican’s diplomatic unit “deplore(d)” the criticism of the pope “on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context, and 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.”

Benedict’s remarks have provoked an international furor, especially in Europe, and elicited rebukes from officials of the French and German governments, United Nations agencies, and the World Health Organization.

Britain’s leading medical journal, the Lancet, called Benedict’s statement about condoms “wildly inaccurate,” and tens of thousands of Facebook users have reportedly pledged to send condoms to the Vatican in protest.


“In some European countries an unprecedented media campaign was unleashed concerning the predominant, not to say exclusive, value of prophylactics in the fight against AIDS,” the Vatican said in Friday’s statement.

But the statement also expressed gratitude for gestures of support by the “Africans and the true friends of Africa, as well as by some members of the scientific community.”

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