ROME, Nov 24 (AFP) - AIDS has claimed the lives of a number of Catholic priests in Italy, most of them heterosexuals, a Catholic abbot said in an interview, shedding rare light on what the news magazine Panorama called the "ultimate taboo" inside the Catholic Church.

Antonio Mazzi, a 71-year-old involved in social work to help young drug addicts, said that from his experience ""sick priests are about 40 years old."

"They come to me years after they were infected; among them monks, parish priests and other members of the clergy," Mazzi told Panorama.

"Those working in offices, employees, secretaries and journalists" were the most affected. "Maybe they don't feel so much like priests, are frustrated, or are career-oriented," he said.

Mazzi does not personally know of any gay priests who were HIV positive but said that heterosexual priests were mainly infected after seeing prostitutes.

He could not give figures of the number of infected priests but said, "the phenomenon exists.

"We must get rid of priests' aureole. We are no saints," he said, adding that between 10 and 15 had sought his help over the years.

Many of the gay priests were young, he said. "This phenomenon is above all spreading in seminaries...just as happens on ships and in army barracks."

Mazzi worked in an abbey on northern Lake Garda until a few years ago where he gave spirtual assistance to "homosexual priests, priests in love and those with children."

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