Catholics Back AIDS Condoms

CAFOD, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, says that condoms can be used in the battle against AIDS, according to a news article in the United Kingdom's "Telegraph" online newspaper.

"The agency, which comes under the [authority] of the Roman Catholic Bishops of England and Wales, said campaigns to counter the disease in the developing world had to be realistic and employ a range of methods.

A growing number of senior clerics have taken a softer line than the Church's official blanket ban on artificial contraception.

...[CAFOD] said in a carefully worded policy paper that, while it opposed Aids campaigns that focused entirely on condoms to prevent Aids, it recognised that many poor people had limited choices.

...'There are immense social and cultural pressures on poor men and women to conform to accepted stereotypes: there are economic pressures that result from the break-up of families as migrant workers spend months on end far from their spouse and family support, plunged into unbearably harsh working and living conditions by exploitative local or multi-national employers' said the editorial by Ann Smith, HIV corporate strategist at [CAFOD].

The [CAFOD] paper said that simplistic prevention policies for [AIDS] would not work."

Click here to read the original editorial written by Ann Smith from CAFOD.