Vatican Working On Document On Condom Use And AIDS

ROME - The Vatican is expected to permit the use of condoms for AIDS patients, according to an interview with a high-ranking cardinal published Sunday.
The Vatican is currently working on a document on the subject that would be published soon, Vatican 'Health Minister' Javier Lozano Baragan said in an interview with the Italian daily La Repubblica.
The Roman Catholic Church has up till now strictly prohibited the use of condoms even in marriage for AIDS patients and HIV-infected people.
Observers in Rome suggest that a Curial cardinal such as Baragan could only make a statement on a such a sensitive theme when it had been first agreed upon with Pope Benedict XVI.
'It is a very difficult and delicate topic,' said Baragan, considered a close confidant of the pope. 'It was Benedict who demanded an examination of this special question of the use of condoms by AIDS patients.'
However the cardinal did not provide details on the Vatican's new rules.
The interview appears just days after an influential Italian cardinal suggested that it was permissible for people to use condoms to protect themselves from the HIV virus.
In an interview published on Friday by the Italian weekly L'Espresso, 79-year-old Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said 'certainly the use of the prophylactic can constitute, in certain situations, the lesser evil.'
'As far as the special case in which one of the spouses is affected by AIDS, they are obliged to protect the other partner,' Martini said.
Asked what the Church should do about the thousands of unclaimed fertilized eggs that have been produced via artificial insemination and which are now being kept in refrigerators, Martini said he was not opposed to single women being implanted embryos 'that would otherwise be destined to perish.'
Martini also said he was open to the possibility of single parents adopting children - so long as they are able to guarantee his or her well-being and - and noted that Italy's law on abortion had at least succeeded in reducing the number of illegal terminations of pregnancies.
from The Amherst Times