Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - May 9, 2006
Shanthini Naidoo
Cardinal Wilfrid Napier said this week that, although reports say the Vatican may allow condom usage between married couples if one of them is infected with HIV/Aids, it does not indicate that condoms are effective.
"We must ask ourselves if there is any country in Africa where the rate of infection has decreased due to condom usage.
"There is simply no research to prove that," said Napier, who heads the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference.
The Catholic church's traditional ban on birth control, detailed in Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, is still in place.
But reports from Rome say that a document on the issue has been approved by the Council for Health Pastoral Care and is awaiting review from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
"I cannot comment until I see the document. There is no way in which the Vatican is going to say that people must now do something which they were told was wrong in the past," Napier said.
"If something was wrong in the past, it is still wrong now," he added.
Nathan Geffen, a spokesman for the Aids activist group the Treatment Action Campaign, said it was a "step in the right direction" should the decision be positive on the condom issue.
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