“You could laugh about it if it didn’t have such fatal consequences for countless people: the Pope is prepared to allow an exception to the ban on condom use in the case of prostitutes – be they male, female or transsexual. Other groups are left out: The women who are infected by HIV-positive men; the families who cannot support another child, but who are denied the method of contraception by condoms, which is just about affordable for them, for religious reasons. This shows once again the inhuman attitude of the Catholic Church, which accepts the suffering of countless people just to avoid shaking its dogmas,” says Frieder Otto Wolf, acting President of the HVD.
Even positive interpretations, such as that of the Chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, that it is precisely these passages in the interview that show the Pope’s deep empathy, who also thinks his way into people’s difficult life situations, “do not change the fact that the Pope also reaffirms his fundamentalist positions in the interview volume that has just been published. In this sense, one must state: The opportunity to adapt Catholic principles of faith to today’s reality has been missed here.”
