AIDS campaigners sounded a jarring note (disharmonisk tone) Monday over the papacy of John Paul II, describing his ban on condom use, abhorrence of homosexuality and conservatism on womens rights as bleak failures in the fight against HIV.
The popes tenure straddled the emergence of the first cases of AIDS to its spread as a global pandemic that by last year had claimed more than 20 million lives and left nearly 40 million others infected with HIV.
As the catastrophe unfolded, the pontiff repeatedly called for support for people sickened with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and always pleaded for the cause of AIDS orphans.
– At a time of mourning, it is important to note that whatever else can be said, he did help to ease AIDS stigma, an official with an international health agency, involved in the fight against HIV said.
Set against that, though, the pope took a deeply conservative line when it came to the causes of infection and preventing its spread.
In his edicts, he fought indefatigably against condoms, branded homosexuality immoral and emphasised a passive role for women as family anchor and child bearer.
With an eye to Catholic liberals who suggested condoms could help protect against HIV, the pope declared in a landmark message in 1988 that use of contraception was “intrinsically illicit” (utilladelig i hele sit væsen).
– No personal or social circumstances could ever, can now, or will ever, render such an act lawful in itself, he said.
Less than three weeks before he died, the pope told Tanzanian bishops on March 11 that “fidelity (troskab) within marriage and abstinence outside are the only sure ways to limit the further spread of AIDS infection.”
Radical AIDS campaigners said Monday that, in their view, by stigmatising homosexuality, denying condoms and hampering female empowerment, the pope may even have helped propagate (sprede) HIV.
– Millions of people in developing countries are orphans, having lost their parents to AIDS because of the popes anti-condom dogma, said British gay campaigner Peter Tatchell of the group OutRage.
– We mourn for the eight million Catholics who have died of AIDS, and worry for the more than 10 million Catholics who are infected, said Khalil Elouardighi of the French branch of the lobby group Act Up.
– It should not be forgotten that millions have died in Africa as a result of this theological rigidity, said the British centrist daily The Independent. “Blindess in the face of AIDS,” was the headline in Frances left-of-centre daily Liberation.
A pro-reform Catholic group, We Are Church, founded in 1996, said John Paul IIs pontificate “was full of contradictions.”
“Among the human rights still crying out for recognition in the church are gender equality… and the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS,” it said.
The popes emphasis on abstinence and fidelity is shared by evangelical American Christians, who have successfully lobbied to have those messages promoted under President George W. Bushs programme to fight AIDS in Africa.
But many workers on the ground in Africa, the home of two-thirds of the worlds AIDS victims, say this message is almost useless among sexually curious youngsters and among men for whom promiscuity is a way of life.
They also say that AIDS is spread by lack of female empowerment: in many settings, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, a woman who cannot refuse intercourse or oblige her promiscuous husband to wear a condom places herself – and their foetus – at risk.
Kilde: The Push Journal
