Pope Benedict Explicitly States Condom Use Sanctioned For Those Infected With HIV “Whether It’s A Man, Woman Or Transsexual”

Pope Benedict XVI Tuesday clearly articulated that the need to prevent diseases like AIDS could eclipse the Catholic Church’s historic opposition to the use of condoms, the New York Times reporting that the Reverend Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, said that Pope Benedict believes that use of condoms by those people infected with HIV could provide “the first step of responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk to the life of the person with whom there are relations; whether it’s a man, woman or a transsexual.” That expands and make certain statements made in a book based on interviews given by the pope – Light of the World – released on Tuesday,in which Benedict said that condoms were not “a real or moral solution” but that in certain circumstances, their use could become “a first step in the direction of a moralisation, a first assumption of responsibility,” adding the example of a male prostitute, by extension homosexual sex, since the church opposes the use of prophylactics on the grounds that all sexual acts should be open to procreation. Although the Pope never explicitly contradicts the Catholic teaching against the use of contraception or even endorse the widespread use of condoms, conservative Catholics are angry, while the Reverend Jon Fuller, a Jesuit priest and a physician at the Center for HIV/AIDS Care and Research at Boston Medical Center, said “We’re in a new world” and that the pope is “implicitly” saying “that you cannot anymore raise the objection that any use of the condom is an intrinsic evil.”