Senior Catholic backs use of condoms

ROME - A senior Italian Cardinal has broken ranks with the traditional Roman Catholic stance on contraception by suggesting that condoms should be used to prevent the spread of HIV/Aids.

The former Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, said condoms, when used by married couples, were a "lesser evil" than passing on the disease to more people.

"A spouse infected with Aids is obliged to protect the other partner who also has to be able to protect herself," said the respected Jesuit prelate, who remains the most influential figure among Catholic liberals in spite of having retired from his tenure at the head of Italy's largest archdiocese.

Cardinal Martini's comments, published yesterday by L'Espresso magazine during a debate with a leading Catholic surgeon, Ignazio Marino, were in stark contrast to the staunchly conservative teachings of the Catholic Church.

The official Vatican line on condoms is that they remain forbidden to Catholics under any circumstances, even as worldwide levels of Aids continue to soar.

The Church rules it is unacceptable to use them even to prevent the transmission of the virus from one married person to his or her partner.

Sexual abstinence, it claims, is the best way to fight the disease, which this year has claimed more than three million deaths.

Cardinal Martini acknowledged the Church faced a dilemma over the issue.

"The question is whether religious authorities should advertise such a means of protection, as they feel that other morally sustainable methods, including abstinence, are consequently being pushed into the background," he said.

Cardinal Martini also pledged his support for legal abortions and the use of frozen embryos to enable single women to produce children.

And the 79-year-old Cardinal voiced the opinion that, in the event of a conflict of values over the use of frozen embryos, "it seems to me more ethically meaningful to move toward the solution that allows a life to continue rather than allow it to die".

Cardinal Martini also spoke out in favour of adoptions by unmarried and single people when there is not a "wise and mature" couple available for orphans.

The Catholic Church, which runs many hospitals and institutions to help AIDS victims, 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.

However, there have been growing calls from moderate figures in the Church, including leading Belgian cardinal Godfried Daneels, to making exceptions for special cases such as when a man with HIV/AIDS insists on having sex with his wife.

Pope Benedict has avoided the thorny issue of the Church's condom ban, saying only he feels close to victims of the killer disease and encourages efforts to find a cure.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS