It has taken close to thirty years, but it’s time for some seriously good news. AIDS in Africa is retreating. As elsewhere on the planet, new cases of infection with HIV have dropped with the astounding figure of 25 percent. “For the first time change is happening at the heart of the epidemic,” according to Michel Sidibe, UNAids executive director. “In places where HIV was stealing away dreams, we now have hope.”
These figures were released already a few weeks back, in September to be precise. The reasons for the decline are mostly better awareness and an improvement of preventative measures (read: condoms). So, I admit I’m giving you ‘old news.’
The thing is, this week something other amazing happened. I have found the relative silence around it quite deafening to be very honest. As if the globe still needs to come to terms with the scope of what has been said. Or maybe that’s because the sender of the message suddenly realised he had unleashed a storm he had no idea was lurking…
What am I talking about? I’m talking about the slip of the tongue made by pope Benedict XVI in an interview with a German journalist, about condom use by a prostitute (by the way: in the German translation the prostitute is female, in the Italian translation the prostitute is male, which all adds to the confusion of course). This is what the pope is quoted as having said:
“There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”
What a difference this statements makes with the one made only just over a year ago, while on his way to AIDS-riddled Africa for his first papal visit to the continent. Condoms were not the solution to the AIDS-crisis, a change of behaviour was. Although he of course made a very valid point while saying this, it was like giving live ammunition to an execution squad. Highly critisised for his conservative approach and its dark dogma of condom use, the Vatican of course was not really expected to alter its opinions. The Church is infamous for the amount of time it takes to publicly rectify its own mistakes.
When news leaked out about the papal turn-about re condoms I immediately thought back at that one statement made by an East German official on the evening of 9 November 1989 who announced the opening of the Berlin Wall, but was not given a date by his superiors. When asked by a journalist when the Wall would actually open, the dignitary turned the peace of paper with all announcements around searching for a date and then blurted out, “As per immediate.” And that was the end of the infamous Berlin Wall – a slip of the tongue. Within minutes thousands and soon hundreds of thousands of people from East Germany gathered at the border posts to have a look at what the evils of capitalism had done to West Berlin.
Conservative Catholic commentators are quick to minimise the consequences of the dramatic papal shift, and pretend nothing’s changed. Other, more progressive forces in the Mother Church made sure the statements were not to be swept under any carpet. “This is a game-changer,” declared the Rev. James Martin, a prominent Jesuit writer and editor. The statement by the Vatican strengthened that line of thinking when it publicly stated that the use of a condom is to be preferred above the infliction of AIDS upon another person.
For millions and millions and millions of men, women and children in Africa the change of divinely inspired insight has come to late. They’ve either died or are infected for life.