Madrid, Spain, Dec 4, 2006 / 22:00 pm
The Vice President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Msgr. Jean Lafitte, said Monday the Catholic Church defends a method of AIDS prevention that is “real” and “not illusory,” the promotion of “the affective relationship in the context of marriage.”
During an interview with Europa Press, Msgr. Lafitte explained that the Church is “greatly concerned” about the health of those infected with AIDS and about any possibility for cure. Nevertheless, he said, the Vatican “defends prevention that is real.”
Msgr. Lafitte, who recently taught a course in Madrid on the social dimension of human existence, explained, “When people are told that there are safe ways of preventing this disease they are told so because they are safe in 85% of the cases, but someone who uses a method that is not totally safe and increases his or her number of sexual experiences is taking a number of risks.”
With regards to prevention, the Vatican official stressed, “The idea of the Church is to show to all the beauty of the affective relationship of human love, of the dignity of the relationship between a man and a woman when each one offers him or herself to the other in a stable relationship that is marriage.” Marriage, he noted, provides the kinds of conditions that make for true prevention.