c. 2006 Religion News Service

Vatican Report on Condoms and AIDS Expected `Soon’

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Acting on a request by Pope Benedict XVI, the Vatican is set to issue a document on condom use by people with AIDS and other “grave diseases.”

In an interview published Sunday (April 23) in the leftist daily La Repubblica of Rome, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, who heads the Vatican’s health care department, said his office had been “carefully” studying the issue and would release its findings “soon.”

He did not indicate whether the Vatican intended to relax the decades-long condom ban that has drawn sharp criticism in light of the AIDS epidemic that has ravaged Africa and other parts of the developing world.

“It is Benedict XVI who asked us for a study on this particular aspect of using a condom by those afflicted with AIDS and by those with infectious diseases,” Barragan said without elaborating on the document’s contents.

Barragan’s interview came two days after the leftist monthly L’espresso published comments by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini calling condom use a “lesser evil” when used to prevent AIDS infection. Martini, the former archbishop of Milan once considered a contender for the papacy, has been a leading voice in the liberal wing of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

Martini’s assertion that “everything possible must be done to fight AIDS,” including the use of condoms, contrasted with the views of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Family, which has asserted that the HIV virus, which causes AIDS, is small enough to pass through latex, making condoms an ineffective form of prevention.

Barragan did not say whether the forthcoming document would reflect Martini’s views, describing condom use as a “very difficult and delicate subject that requires prudence.” In past interviews, however, Barragan has expressed positions similar to Martini’s, saying that condom use is acceptable during sex for married couples in which one spouse is infected.

The Vatican’s ban on condoms, as a form of contraception, has been in place since 1968. No pope, however, has addressed the question of condoms in the context of AIDS and other infectious diseases.

_ Stacy Meichtry

Exhausted Head of Anglican Church of Canada to Retire in 2007

TORONTO (RNS) Saying he is “absolutely exhausted,” the head of the Anglican Church of Canada has announced he will resign next year.

“After a great deal of prayerful consideration, I have decided, for reasons chiefly personal and family-related, that I should retire in 2007 following General Synod and the election of a successor,” Archbishop Andrew Hutchison, the primate of the Canadian church, said Sunday (April 23).

Speaking at the opening of the regular spring meeting of the church’s bishops, Hutchison noted that he is keeping with a pledge he made at his election in 2004 that he would serve just one three-year term.

But since then, he said some had urged him to stay through the Lambeth Conference of the world’s Anglican bishops in 2008, when he would reach the mandatory retirement age of 70.

Despite those urgings, “I believe the best answer is for me to stick with my original statement” and step down in 2007, Hutchison, the former archbishop of Montreal, wrote in a letter to the Canadian church.

Perhaps no other issue has been more prominent under Hutchison than homosexuality. Seen as a liberal, he was among 146 bishops in 1998 to dissent publicly from the Anglican Communion’s decision that year to oppose priests in active gay relationships and to term the blessing of same-sex rituals “incompatible with Scripture.”

Yet he was tested repeatedly by the precedent set in the British Columbia diocese of New Westminster, which began blessing same-sex unions in 2002, prompting a backlash from others in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The church’s House of Bishops will choose candidates for the next primate at their spring meeting in 2007, and a full convention of bishops will elect the next leader later that year.

Hutchison, 68, told the Anglican Journal that he was aware the position would be taxing, but he really felt the pinch in the last two years.

Now that his decision is public, he said he felt “a sense of relief,” but stressed that his decision was purely for personal reasons, adding, “I love the job.”

He said he “will continue to give this my very best between now and the General Synod,” and that he submitted his decision in writing to the archbishop of Canterbury.

_ Ron Csillag

Israeli Police, Orthodox Christians Clash During Religious Ritual

JERUSALEM (RNS) Orthodox Christians participating in a Saturday (April 22) ritual clashed with Israeli police on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed to be the site where Jesus was crucified and buried.

In anticipation of Easter, which Orthodox Christians celebrated Sunday, the ancient Ceremony of the Holy Fire was conducted. An estimated 15,000 pilgrims took part in the ritual, in which a flame believed to be miraculously ignited by Jesus is used to light thousands of other flames.

Armenian Archbishop Nourhan Manougian reported problems.

He said that “some members of the 3,000-strong police force deployed to keep law and order during the sometimes-unruly procession through the Old City of Jerusalem prevented hundreds of Armenian faithful from entering the church.”

Following the procession, Manougian told the newspaper Haaretz, “Israel always declares that it allows free access to the holy places but in fact the police acted like a despot to pilgrims.”

Shmuel Ben-Ruby, a spokesman for the Jerusalem Police, said in an interview that his department had detained three Armenians, and that the rest of the Armenian worshippers were permitted to enter.

Ben-Ruby said that Armenian clergymen attacked Russian pilgrims who tried to enter the church with the Armenian contingent.

“I personally saw them beating them up. When this happened we stopped the fighting and prevented some (of the Russians) from entering the church.”

Thousands of police were on hand to prevent skirmishes between members of various Orthodox denominations, who have clashed in the past over who would carry the flame into the church. The church itself is divided into sections, each claimed by an Orthodox group.

_ Michele Chabin

French Government Responds to Christian Concerns on Immigration

PARIS (RNS) Christian leaders in France have aired concerns about new immigration legislation so vocally that they have prompted a response from the country’s center-right government.

In letters to French Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant leaders, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy argues in favor of his new policy of “chosen immigration.”

“France no longer has the means to welcome all those who see it as an Eldorado,” Sarkozy wrote in letters published Thursday (April 20) by France’s Christian La Croix daily. As a result, the interior minister added, “migratory flows must be regulated, chosen.”

The French Parliament is expected to examine in early May a bill aimed at luring educated professionals to France, while imposing new immigration obstacles against unskilled workers and their families hailing from outside the European Union.

Published by La Croix, Sarkozy’s letters to the three churches were not identical. While suggesting he might be open to tweaking the legislation, the interior minister specifically invited the Protestant and Orthodox leaders to discuss the bill at his office.

By contrast, his letter to Jean-Pierre Ricard, head of the French Bishops’ Conference, responded directly to tough criticism against the bill leveled by Catholic authorities.

The letter “doesn’t reassure us,” Monsignor Olivier de Berranger, bishop of the Paris-area diocese of Saint-Denis, told La Croix.

“We agree the current situation isn’t good, but let’s not believe we can resolve it through judicial modifications … when we need to treat the causes of migrations.”

As in the United States, immigration is a thorny issue in France, where the unemployment rate hovers near 10 percent. The riots that swept the country last fall _ largely authored by ethnic-immigrant youths _ only heightened the national debate and racial tensions.

A poll published Friday by Metro, a free local newspaper, found more than a third of the French believed that the far-right, anti-immigration National Front party responded to their daily concerns.

A separate poll also published Friday by the news channel LCI found that 43 percent of respondents believe the far right offers its most useful contribution to the national debate on immigration matters.

_ Elizabeth Bryant

Quote of the Day: Institute for the Future Director Paul Saffo

(RNS) “The simple fact is porn is an early adopter of new media. If you’re trying to get something established … you’re going to privately and secretly hope and pray that the porn industry likes your medium.”

_ Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., commenting in a Los Angeles Times story about how pornography tends to be at the forefront of technology.

MO/PH END RNS