Astonishingly just weeks after cancelling the excommunication of a holocaust denier, Pope Benedict XVI yet again has the Vatican PR machine collectively pulling its hair out.

The Pontiff’s latest proclamation comes to the remarkable conclusion, even by his dogmatic standards, that condoms are not a solution to the AIDS epidemic – but are instead part of the problem.

On a high profile visit to sub Saharan Africa where it’s estimated that around 30 million people live with AIDS, and the rate of infection is still increasing, he said “AIDS is a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, and that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems".

The Vatican officially encourages sexual abstinence in the fight against the spread of the disease, but these comments have incensed health campaigners who argue that although condom use cannot prevent Aids it is a proven effective barrier to the spread of the disease.

His view that the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on chastity outside marriage as the only sure way of preventing the spread of HIV and Aids, maybe true, but naively ignores the daily reality millions of Africans and others around the world live with every day.

Catholic and human rights activists condemned the Pope as once more showing himself out of touch with reality by advocating policies that would only increase the suffering of some of the poorest people on the planet.

The Pontiff seems to be wrapping the Church back up in a dangerous conservatism on the subject of birth control just when more enlightened Catholics seemed to be winning the argument

Two years ago Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the former Archbishop of Milan, said that in couples where one partner had HIV/Aids, the use of condoms was "a lesser evil". A marked softening of the previous blanket ban on their use.

The World Health Organisation said that "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90 per cent, this is a fact. But these latest comments clearly show that the Catholic Church continues to put religious fundamentalism ahead of the facts and indeed ahead of protecting the lives of millions.

The Pope’s logic is based on the conclusion that even in areas of Africa where condoms are widely available AIDS is still rife, so condoms must be part of the problem.

This is a bit like saying that despite the use of mosquito nets in Zambia malaria still exists, but in Glasgow there are no mosquito nets and no malaria, so the use of mosquito nets must be part of the problem.
 
An utterly ludicrous conclusion, much like the views of this increasingly maligned Pontiff. The type of logic so detached from the real world that it is becoming an increasing irrelevance to the lives of the majority.

Either his PR advisors are incompetent and the views attributed to the Pope are indeed misleading, in which case heads should roll. Or he himself is playing a naïve game with the world’s media to see just how far he can get away with winding the views of his Church back a few centuries.