AIDS activists welcome pope's words on condoms

Liberal Catholics, AIDS activists and health officials on Sunday welcomed Pope Benedict's comments that using condoms may sometimes be justified to stop the spread of the disease.

"It is a marvelous victory for common sense and reason, a major step forward toward recognizing that condom use can play a vital role in reducing the future impact of the HIV pandemic, said Jon O'Brien, head of the U.S. group Catholics for Choice.

The pope spoke out in a new book to be published on Tuesday and called "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Sign of the Times". His remarks, while limited in scope and not changing the Roman Catholic ban on contraception, were nonetheless greeted as a breakthrough.

"This is a significant and positive step forward taken by the Vatican," said UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibe. "This move recognizes that responsible sexual behavior and the use of condoms have important roles in HIV prevention."

In the 219-page book the pope also speaks frankly about the possibility that he could resign for health reasons and defends wartime pontiff Pius XII against Jewish accusations that he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust.

He says scandals of sexual abuse of minors by priests were "an unprecedented shock", even though he had followed the issue for years, and says he can understand why people might quit the Church in protest.

But it is the section on condoms in the book - a long interview with German Catholic journalist Peter Seewald - that marked a crack in the once tightly shut door of Church policy.

He cites the example of the use of condoms by prostitutes as "a first step toward moralization", even though condoms are "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection".

The original German text and the French and English versions of the book refer to a male prostitute but an excerpt in Italian in the Vatican newspaper cites a female prostitute.

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While some Roman Catholic leaders and theologians have spoken about the limited use of condoms to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS as the lesser of two evils, this is the first time the pope has mentioned the possibility.

"We have never heard this so clearly from a pope's mouth," Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said, adding, however, that it would be wrong to call it revolutionary.

He said the pope had made a "courageous and original" contribution to the debate about responsible sexuality, while stressing that the use of condoms was not the moral high ground.

In the book, Benedict made clear he did not want to weaken the Church's fundamental opposition to artificial birth control, a source of grievance to many ordinary Catholics.

Last year, the pope caused an international uproar when he told journalists accompanying him to Africa that condoms should not be used because they could worsen the spread of AIDS.