Old habits die hard. This old saying never seemed more true than in the patronising attitude the western countries showed in their reaction to the Pope's words while he was flying to Africa on a pastoral visit.
He had said that the use of condoms would not solve the problem of AIDS in Africa but would simply aggravate it. A chorus of voices, especially European ones, were raised and the Pope was vilified in a manner rarely afforded to a religious or political figure. The crucial question, however, to ask and to reflect upon is the following: Where are the African voices raised against the Pope's words? Why did African leaders, the most involved in the matter, not protest and show their disapproval of Pope Benedict?
The only voices heard so far have been mostly those of European leaders and journalists many of them belonging to the former colonial powers that ruled in Africa. It seems that the temptation, as in days gone by, to tell Africans just how to be living their life is too strong to resist. In our crass ignorance of the reality of African life we want to export cultural models which are totally alien to its tradition and customs.
The Pope believes, and he is not alone in this, that the more use is made of condoms the more sexual promiscuity increases. An analogy to this is the following: Whenever, after some violent crime involving the killing of tens of innocent people occurs, as in the recent massacres in Germany and the US, there are inexorably widespread calls for the curbing of arms among the population.
It is rightfully argued that the more arms are carried about, the more likely it is for them to be used should the occasion arise. Is it not the same and even more considering how strong the sexual impulse is, when condoms are so easily available? Since we dare not speak anymore of safe sex but of safer sex since it has been ascertained that no contraceptive is absolutely safe, unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections inevitably spread. The statistics in western countries are proof of this. The AIDS problem in the West has not gone away but now, thankfully, due to the new drugs available, those who contract the disease can aspire to a longer life.
In Africa, with its hot weather and lack of running water, condom use poses a lot of problems which do not exist in developed countries. There is one country in this continent however that has been incredibly successful in its fight against AIDS. This is Uganda. Here the stress has mostly been on abstinence and fidelity and not on the use of condoms.
The decrease in HIV cases has been dramatic and astounding. This has been ignored by the western media but comes as no surprise because condoms, like embryonic stem-cell research, mean big business while abstinence and fidelity do not. Africans need medicines against the multiple diseases that plague the continent, school books and running water and not cultural and social programmes which do not work even in the countries that promote them.
During his visit the Pope made several important statements which have barely been reported by the western media with its obsession with sex and all that concerns it. Pope Benedict had severe words for those foreign powers, especially the multinational companies, which often foment civil wars in African countries in order to sell arms while propping up corrupt governments in order to facilitate the plunder of the continent's rich natural resources.
Brave and true words indeed, which together with those about condoms, could only have been uttered by a man of God like Pope Benedict and which were duly appreciated by the multitudes that greeted him during his visit.