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Catholic leader urged to review condom stance

    JOHANNESBURG

    South Africa's Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu has urged the newly elected Catholic pontiff to reconsider the Church's stance on condoms in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

    Tutu admitted he had been "hoping against hope" that the Vatican would elect its first African pope in 1,500 years.

    "Of course it would be wonderful to have a black African, but that is just a dramatic way of saying that the church ought to be hearing from those parts where [Catholicism] has been growing very significantly - faster than it has been happening elsewhere in the world," he commented.

    The developing world is home to two-thirds of the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, and Tutu said he hoped the new pope would address "the whole question of disease - AIDS particularly".

    This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions

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