catholicsforchoice.org,
August 16, 2011
International Youth Coalition Backs Pope on Condoms
MADRID, SPAIN —Catholic
World Youth Day has drawn an unusual coalition of activists to Madrid this year—young
people who are thanking the pope for recognizing that condom use
saves lives by preventing the transmission of HIV.
The World Youth Day 4 All coalition is a global initiative led, organized and staffed by young people from Azerbaijan, Belize, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Ireland, Jamaica, Morocco, Nicaragua, Poland, Uganda, the United States and Venezuela. The message they want to share with the World Youth Day pilgrims is “Good Catholics Use Condoms” and they say they’ve got the pope on their side, citing his statement late last year acknowledging that condoms use can be an effective and moral step in preventing HIV transmission.
“The young people in our coalition came from all over the world to proclaim at Catholic World Youth Day that good Catholics use condoms. HIV and AIDS are realities in the lives of young people and we know that in good conscience Catholics can use condoms to protect those we care about,” said Marissa Valeri, a lead organizer of the coalition. “We welcome that the pope has come out to say that condoms can prevent HIV transmission. We now want him to go further in publicly backing condom use and facing down Vatican conservatives because lives can be saved with a more realistic and compassionate view of condoms and sexuality in our church.”
The coalition has adapted the 10-year-long, international public education campaign called Condoms4Life to support the pope and promote condom use. Condoms4Life has been a major public presence in Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Germany, Kenya, Mexico, the Philippines, South Africa, the United States and Zimbabwe since its inception, and has been highlighted by international leaders in HIV and AIDS prevention as a critically important voice at International AIDS conferences in Toronto, Mexico City and Vienna, as well as at World Youth Day in Cologne. In the campaign’s ten years, messages have gone from “Banning condoms kills” to “Thank you, Pope Benedict, for acknowledging that condoms save lives.”
The Condoms4Life message almost didn’t make it to Madrid. After months of planning, at the last minute the municipal authorities and Publimedia (a local media company) withdrew permission for the campaign messages to appear on billboards, buses and bus shelters in downtown Madrid, claiming that the ads could be “offensive.”
Refusing to accept this censorship, the World Youth Day 4 All coalition will be taking the message to the streets this week in Madrid. Coalition members will be personally engaging and educating their peers by sharing Condoms4Life reminders that good Catholics use condoms. They will share their stories and promote the campaign through both traditional and social media, distribute thousands of posters throughout downtown Madrid and present dramatic night-time manifestations of the campaign. World Youth Day pilgrims and residents of Madrid will even be invited to share their own messages via text messaging to be integrated into the campaign.
“The World Youth Day 4 All coalition is determined to back the pope and his remarks supporting condom use, despite attempts by some conservative members of the Catholic hierarchy to put the genie back in the bottle,” Valeri said. Similar efforts to thwart progress in the church were successful forty years ago when a few powerful conservatives couldn’t accept the idea of change and convinced the Pope to ignore the majority of his counselors who said that the Vatican’s ban on birth control could and should be lifted. The result was the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which, against the advice of the pope’s own commission of bishops, theologians and married Catholics, continued the ban on contraception—including condoms.
Catholics, people affected by HIV/AIDS, reproductive health advocates and allies from all over the world who are attending World Youth Day agree about the devastating effects of the Vatican's ban—for Catholics and all those served by Catholic healthcare and charity services for those at risk of contracting or transmitting HIV. Members of the World Youth Day 4 All coalition are available for comment.