Belgium Archbishop Believes That AIDS Is Nature “Taking Revenge If You Don’t Use Your Body Correctly”

SBS.com.au reports on remarks made by Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard, the presumptive head of the Belgium Roman Catholic Church in a new book, Monsignor Leonard – Conversations, that equates AIDS as “a sort of inherent justice.” The archbishop, appointed in January, made the comments in an updated Dutch translation Thursday of a 2006 French book that is a compilation of interviews he has given, and that had already been condemned, Leonard referencing a comment made by the late Pope John Paul II, who said, when asked if AIDS was a punishment from God, answered that it was difficult to determine God’s will. Leonard said that “I would not at all think in such terms. I do not see this illness as a punishment, at most a sort of inherent justice. When you mistreat the environment it ends up by mistreating us in turn. And when you mistreat human love, perhaps it winds up taking vengeance without there needing to be a transcendental cause,” adding that “Mistreating the deep nature of human love always ends up spawning catastrophes at all levels.”The statements arrive a week after a commission set up by the church revealed hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests over several decades, including thirteen victims who have since committed suicide. Friday, the archbishop released a statement on the church’s website that said his comments had been misunderstood, and that what he meant was “When we adopt a form of behaviour that is not right, there are consequences that let us know that it’s not correct. At the beginning of this epidemic, if I’ve understood the scientific articles, there were risky practices, sex with multiple partners, anal relations instead of vaginal which allowed the proliferation to happen. So we can say, if we want to reason in that way, that nature is taking revenge if you don’t use your body correctly.” He emphasized that he had “sympathy” and “solidarity” for all AIDS sufferers and hopes that all are “treated in the best possible conditions.” When Leonard was appointed in January, 2010 in a televised interview he said “homosexuality is not the same as normal sex, in the same way that anorexia is not a normal appetite.”