26-July-2004 -- Catholic World News Brief

POPE ASKS PRAYERS FOR PEACE IN AFRICA
Castel Gandalfo, Jul. 26 (CWNews.com) - At his Sunday Angelus audience on July 25, Pope John Paul II called upon the faithful to pray for peace in Africa, particularly in Uganda and Sudan. Speaking at his summer residence in Castel Gandalfo, to a crowd that gathered in the courtyard there, the Holy Father said that despite the relaxation of the summer, "my thoughts are turning frequently to the tragic conditions of several regions of the world." In particular, he said, he thought of violence in Africa. "For more than 18 years, northern Uganda has been devastated by a inhuman conflict which involves millions of people, most of them children," the Pope said.

"How can we remain indifferent?" the Pope asked.

I suppose you'd think I was utterly heartless if I told you I laughed out loud when I read this. Haven't you learned to trust me yet?

The Pope was talking about the military conflicts in Africa, and begged the international community to stand up and protest the senseless loss of life. He was also simultaneously ignoring the fact that he personally oversees an organization that has killed more Africans than all wars in the last 20 years combined. He begs for us to think of the children, while praying we don't think of the ones infected by a deadly plague because of his specific directives to Catholic missionaries in Africa.

I am, of course, speaking about the Catholic Church and its blatant lies about AIDS and condoms.

"Relying on condoms is like betting on your own death," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the Vatican's spokesperson on family affairs. "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom," he says. Catholic Bishops and Cardinals are, at this very moment, repeating this idea across four continents, at the express direction of the Vatican. Some priests even state that condoms are laced with AIDS, according to AIDS activists in Kenya. Nairobi Archbishop Raphael Ndingi Nzeki says "AIDS... has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms." The Vatican has issued statements refusing to disagree or correct this statement.

A recent BBC program, "Sex and the Holy City," even shows footage of a Catholic nun telling her HIV-positive choir master not to use latex condoms with his wife because "the virus can pass through." Far from denying this footage, the Vatican has reissued its support for such statements.

The National Institutes of Health constructed a panel to examine the effectiveness of condoms in preventing disease, and included anti-condom advocates on that panel. According to its report from 2001, latex condoms are impermiable to even the smallest pathogens, and HIV is actually one of the STDs that condoms are most effective against. Scientific research by groups such as the U.S. National Institutes of Health has found "intact condoms... are essentially impermeable" to HIV, and that "condoms provide a highly effective barrier to transmission" of HIV. The World Health Organization reacted with horror to the Vatican's claims, immediately denouncing such misinformation and saying it was especially deadly to perpetuate such ideas when the world is facing a global pandemic that has already killed 20 million people.

The Vatican's Trujillo responded to these points: "They are wrong about that... this is an easily recognizable fact."