Pope says abstinence helping beat AIDS in Africa

Pope Benedict on Thursday said programmes based on promoting abstinence and marital fidelity were seeing success in combating the spread of HIV/AIDS in several parts of Africa.

But for the second day running in comments about AIDS, the Pope avoided a specific mention of the Roman Catholic Church’s controversial ban on condoms.

In an address to the new ambassador from South Africa the Pope said the Catholic Church was well respected by African governments for its efforts to help address social problems.

“One notable example of this is the struggle against HIV/AIDS where statistics taken in several regions of Africa confirm the results of policies based on continence, the promotion of faithfulness in marriage and the importance of family life,” he said.

The Pope did not mention which African regions or statistics he was referring to.

On Wednesday, in a brief message for Thursday’s World AIDS Day, he said he felt close to AIDS victims but did not mention the highly controversial stand which has drawn criticism from health workers both inside and outside the Church.

The Church, which runs many hospitals and institutions to help AIDS victims, opposes the use of condoms except in the rarest of circumstances because they are a form of contraception.

It says that fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence are the best ways to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

The Church says promoting condoms to fight the spread of AIDS fosters what it sees as immoral and hedonistic lifestyles and behaviour that will only contribute to its spread.

One exception sometimes cited by Church experts as an example is that of allowing the use of condoms in the case where a man with HIV/AIDS insists on having sex with his wife.

The latest U.N. estimates say 26 million of the 40 million people infected with HIV worldwide live in Africa, and that Africa saw about 3.2 million of the almost 5 million new infections recorded in 2005.

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