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PANORAMA
SEX and the HOLY CITY
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 12:10:03
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STEVE BRADSHAW: Imagine a land in which ideal love is a reality and ideal sex; simultaneous climax
between a loving couple, and in this land all couples are married. No barriers to perfect self-giving; no
barriers to childbirth; no condoms, IUDs or pills. Abortion is illegal too. This land does not exist, but these
ideals do in the work and thought of Karol Wojtyla, now Pope John Paul II. This is a film about what
happens when those ideals clash with reality.
This is the story of two school girls in Latin America, raped by their father and given no choice but to have
his children. It is the story of Catholic nuns in Africa telling people with AIDS not to use condoms because
they have holes in them. And in Asia, it's the story of a mother of 9 who daren't use contraception. The
Catholic church says it's wrong. They're all lives affected by the beliefs of John Paul II who this week in
the holy city of Rome celebrates 25 years as leader of the world's billion Catholics. Although frail, he is
still leading a campaign against contraception and abortion that has inspired both gratitude and hostility.
Tonight we investigate how the man who idealised women came to be accused of promoting beliefs that
can ruin lives.
Welcome to Mulukuku, remote town in the heart of Nicaragua. Like other Latin American countries,
overwhelmingly Catholic. This is a macho country of often distorted sexual values, where official
estimates suggest one in three women has been physically or sexually abused, and where age and close
relationships are sometimes no barrier to abuse. We met four school girls, all left with babies after being
abused or abandoned. In Catholic Nicaragua abortions or interruptions are almost impossible to obtain
within the law. The Catholic Church believes destroying any life, even a fertilised egg, is immoral. The
girls had no choice but to carry their children to term. Sarai says she was made pregnant by her stepfather,
now on the run after rape charges. She's just 14.
Did you think of completing the pregnancy? Did you think of having an interruption?
SARAI: Yes, I thought of having one. I thought of terminating the pregnancy.
BRADSHAW: Miriam is heavily pregnant by a young man who has abandoned her. She already has two
other children by him.
MIRIAM: My opinion on abortion? Well some people say it's bad because you lose your child. But my
opinion is that it's better not to do it because terminating a pregnancy is a sin.
BRADSHAW: Francisca and Lucila are sisters, they're 15 and 16. Both had small babies after their father
raped them. He is now in jail.
LUCILA: I got pregnant by the father but I was ashamed that it was my own father who got me pregnant.
Afterwards I had to stay like that until I had it and I'm ashamed. The baby is here now.
FRANCISCA: They threw me out of the house, my father and mother, and everyone made things difficult
for me. So I had to bring my child here.
BRADSHAW: Did you think of having an interruption or not?
FRANCISCA: Yes.
LUCILA: Me too.
BRADSHAW: We met the girls in a woman's health clinic run by Dorothy Granada. She says such cases
are not unusual. Sometimes pregnant girls who can't get abortions are even younger.
So when you come across a girl 12 or 13 or 14 whose having to carry her father's child to term?.?
DOROTHY GRANADA
Mulukuku Women's Clinic
It's very awful. It's very terrible. It's very terrible. We cry a lot in this clinic.
BRADSHAW: Some men, Dorothy Granada says, take more care of their cattle than their women. And
she says some pregnant women get a raw deal from the state too. Although they can apply to have legal
abortions if their lives are in danger, few succeed. At the start of the Pope's rein about 100 women a year
got permission for these so-called therapeutic abortions but church pressure has cut that number close to
zero.
GRANADA: The therapeutic abortion simply does not work in this country, and that's because I believe
the threats of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and physicians are simply afraid to exercise their right.
BRADSHAW: The Catholic Church in Nicaragua goes back almost 500 years. Cardinal Obando Y Bravo
has wielded the power of the church here for over three decades. He's just helped persuade the government
to pulp copies of a sex education guide that mentioned abortion and contraception. As a political player,
press and cabinet ministers hang on his words, today about Nicaraguan troops in Iraq. The Cardinal told us
he couldn't see why it should ever be unsafe for a young girl to deliver children.
Cardinal MIGUEL OBANDO Y BRAVO
Archbishop of Managua
Well there is a case, something that happened in El Salvador if my memory serves me rightly, of a child
aged 9 who gave birth without harming the child ? meaning the mother ? and without damage to the baby
she'd conceived. So in this light, it's not the norm for a child of 9 years to give birth, but if this child had eh
misfortune to be raped by someone and then became pregnant, it's always possible, according to doctors
who are experts in this field, to save both lives.
But earlier this year one family took the cardinal on, provoking a national row that split Nicaragua and
capture the headlines for months. Maria and Francisco's daughter, Rosa, not her real name, had been raped
and was pregnant. At the time she was just 8. When we met in the capital Managua, Francisco and Maria,
both Catholics, told me why they decided to seek an abortion for Rosa, despite the opposition of the church.
MARIA
Rosa's mother
She wasn't like someone who's body is capable of surviving pregnancy when they become pregnant. She
would never have been able to get to that stage because she was? a child, let's face it. So we had the
pregnancy terminated because she didn't want to die.
BRADSHAW: As the church protested and lawyers argued, Rosa's parents took her for a clandestine
abortion. While many non-Catholics are opposed to abortion too, it was the Catholic Church that lead the
protests. It says Ross' parents and doctors have excommunicated themselves, risking damnation. Rosa
though is excused, she's still only 9.
Cardinal OBANDO: There is a church law, Canon 13.98, which states that if anyone commits an act of
abortion and the abortion actually takes place, that person then falls ipso facto under the ban of
excommunication.
FRANCISCO
Rosa's father
Well I did feel very bad about what the church was thinking, and then I said to hell with the church. I don?t
want to have anything to do with the ministers or priests in the church, I don?t want to know.
MARIA: I'm not interested in what the Cardinal says, in what he says or does not say about us, or about
this. He doesn't have the right because only God can excommunicate us. I seem to remember that there is
only one son of God on earth, not two.
BRADSHAW: Defeat, this time, for the Cardinal. For many in Nicaragua Rosa's parents have become
heroes, an ordinary couple defying the church and making a stand for women's rights. Others in Nicaragua
are also defying the ban on abortion. Welcome to the world of the guerrilla abortionist. We visited this
underground abortion clinic run by women doctors. It's relatively safe, absolutely illegal. To avoid up to
10 years in jail, the doctor is wearing a mask.
Underground abortion doctor
We only discuss it in a very secret way because for women this is an illegal procedure, and we doctors
could be put in prison for it without a doubt.
BRADSHAW: It's thought there could be as many as 60,000 illegal abortions in Nicaragua every year.
DOCTOR: These are women who have absolutely nowhere else to turn to economically speaking. Women
who have been abused; women who have no access to any kind or method of contraception.
BRADSHAW: What would happen to the women and girls who come here if this clinic wasn't here?
DOCTOR: I think that if we did not exist, I think that there would be many more maternal fatalities, more
adolescent deaths.
BRADSHAW: Women who don?t make it to an underground clinic often end up in Managua's women's
hospital after botched back street abortions. It's estimated that up to one in four pregnancies in Latin
America end in illegal abortion, and that worldwide over 70,000 women die from illegal abortions every
year. In Rome the row over 9 year old Rosa's abortion was followed closely by the cardinal in charge of
promoting Vatican doctrine on the family.
Cardinal Obando in Nicaragua told us that he believes that if a 9 year old girl is pregnant she should not
have an abortion. Is that the position of the Vatican?
Cardinal ALFONSO LOPEZ TRUJILLO
Pontifical Council for the Family
I have followed these events personally. I am writing to the Cardinal personally to express to him in all
sincerity my support because public opinion was quite confused with regard to that case. It did not spare a
thought to defending the rights of unborn babies who are people who have a right to live. The church
wanted to help this young girl, who she'd have been helped up until the birth of her child. But it also came
out and stated the truth. And the truth is that human life is inviolable.
BRADSHAW: But trying to stop all abortions is just one way the Vatican is trying to impose its sexual
values across the world. It's a campaign that draws passion and motivation from the Pope from Poland,
John Paul II, and a vision of womanhood rooted in his personal history. In Kalwaria, close to the Pope's
home town. They're setting off on a burial, the burial of the Virgin Mary. 74 years ago, this ceremony
helped shape the Pope's vision of womanhood. The effigy, carried miles to its final resting place. Out of
devotion to the ultimate mother. For John Paul, the virgin was to be the image of the ideal woman, a
mother to all, and to him when, aged 8, he lost his own mother.
Father MELCHIOR
Guardian of Kalwaria Shrine
When the Pope's mother died, and one day his father took him here to Kalwaria and he pointed to the shire
of our lady, to the picture of our lady of Kalwaria and he said Karol, from now on, she will be your mother,
and he took it so seriously. He came here and he talked to her like he was talk to his earthly mum.
BRADSHAW: John Paul's thought and writing would be haunted by this image of perfect motherhood. As
a young priest Karol Wojtyla studied in Krakow, a city at once modern and medieval; critics say ? like his
thinking.
He took a special interest in the philosophy of love, the family, marriage and sex. He gave friends and
students in his flock advice on relationships, like Karol Tarnowski here on the left with the young pope to
be.
Professor KAROL TARNOWSKI
Friend of the Pope
His idea was to create an atmosphere of cooperation and of responsibility of boys towards girls, you know..
this kind of preparation to the marriage.
BRADSHAW: He helped bring couples together.
TARNOWSKI: Yes. Yes.
BRADSHAW: Couples how ended up being married.
TARNOWSKI: Yes.
BRADSHAW: Did they stay married?
TARNOWSKI: Yes, yes, of course yes.
BRADSHAW: These enduring marriages he'd help nurture were evidence to the future pope, that
Conservative and Catholic ideals of sex and love can work in reality. In 1960, now a bishop, he wrong and
astonishingly frank book about love and marriage. It suggested that for a married man and woman: "climax
must be reached in harmony" though he did add: "as far as possible." But although this was the age of the
pill, Wojtyla also condemned contraception, pills, IUDs and condoms: "All immoral he said. All harmful
for the health." Incredibly as it now seems, the Vatican almost endorsed the pill in the 60s, after all, there
was no explicit ban on contraction in the Bible. But the then Pope, Paul VIth, received a gift from
Krakow's Karol Wojtyla, a report attacking contraception and promoting natural family planning. The
dismay of liberal Catholics, Pope Paul VIth using arguments Wojtyla had advocated, reaffirmed the ban on
contraception. Karol Wojtyla, who'd been made Cardinal by a grateful Paul VIth, had stood against the tide
of Catholic opinion and won. And once elected Pope, 25 years ago this week, he would use his
extraordinary popularity to stand against the tide of world opinion, condemning contraction and the trend to
legalise abortion. But even among the married Polish couples, living the new Pope's dream of love and
responsibility, there were doubters. Karol Tarnowski and his wife, now with a family, were finding the ban
on contraception an obstacle of love and made an appeal to their friend.
And your argument and your wife's was, that sometimes, even among Catholics, artificial contraception can
help life.
TARNOWSKI: Yes, we share an which many Christians share of course. My wife wrote a long letter to
him and we discussed this is a separate discussion in the Vatican and she was very comprehensive, I mean
he understood very well our difficulties but he didn't think that he can change the principles.
BRADSHAW: The Pope suggested the couple could find another confessor, a perhaps painful reminder of
the Pope's unmovable convictions. As well as sympathetic doubters there have been harsh critics of John
Paul's vision of love and responsibility. On their view, he is a man who had never been close to a woman
and so fell victim not to ideals but to stereotypes. A vision of women always defined by their reproductive
powers -mother, wife, temptress. Perhaps the Pope's most powerful opponent for many years was Nafis
Sadik, former head of the United Nations Population Fund. She had a face to face meeting with the Pope in
1994 to discuss women's rights and church teaching.
Dr NAFIS SADIK
Director, UN Population Fund
1987-2000
I was telling him that the judge could do more to educate men because I said the judge could really play a
very positive role, because many women became pregnant not because they wanted to but because their..
you know.. spouses imposed themselves on them. He said: "Don?t you think that the irresponsible
behaviour of men is caused by women?"
BRADSHAW: "Don?t you think the irresponsible behaviour of men is caused by women?"
SADIK: By women? yes.
BRADSHAW: Those were his words?
SADIK: Thos were his words, yes.
BRADSHAW: You came out of this one to one meeting with the Pope believing that the Pope's
understanding of the plight of women in poor countries was what?
SADIK: Was very inadequate. I mean he really didn't understand the situation of girls and women in spite
of the fact that he has travelled to so many countries.
BRADSHAW: The Vatican can point to the Pope's support since his days in Krakow for women's right to
equality, to work and to freedom from abuse. But his critics say his conservative views are having
consequences beyond the lives of individual women.
MetroManila, a 21st century Asian mega city of over 11 million people at the eastern front of the battle
between Catholic sexual ideals and the values of a globalised culture. We came here to the one Catholic
country in Asia to look at the effects of the Pope's teachings on contraception, affects his critics say you can
see in the streets. In the Philippines there are over 40,000 street kids, and yet there is often incredible
ignorance about birth control and some bizarre myths, for example, about the uses of Colegate.
CLAUDIA: When me and my boyfriend ran out of condoms he'd insist we used toothpaste as a
contraceptive. He told me it was Colegate. His friend's wife used toothpaste and he said she never got
pregnant. When we had sex I was so uneasy and uncomfortable because it felt spicy and hot, and it turned
out that I did get pregnant.
Call her Claudia, she already has one child and has lost another, all by the age of 14. We met in a clinic
started by women who want to provide better sex education and contraceptive services. Claudia wasn't the
only girl who'd used toothpaste for birth control.
Dr JUNICE MELGAR
Likhaan Women's Group
It is bizarre, but apparently, you know.. if the men are advising it to other men it's probably not just one
person though. I think the case of Claudia illustrates very strongly how much of a need there is in this
Catholic country for adolescence, sexuality and reproductive services.
BRADSHAW: Why is it particularly difficult in the Catholic country?
MELGAR: Well because even sexuality education is prohibited and even efforts to institutionalise sex
education and contraceptive care is being opposed very strongly by the Catholic Church.
BRADSHAW: There are already 80 million people in the Philippines and the people is expected to double
in three decades, yet the Catholic Church opposes contraception and wants to leave sex education largely to
families. Here even the statues of Christ seem to jostle for space. In the Philippines Congress some liberal
Catholics are defying the Church, urging a reluctant President to back a bill promoting sex education and
contraception.
August 2003
KRISEL LAGMAN-LUISTRO
Philippines Congresswoman
Mr Speaker, Your Honour, I feel that it would be best for President Arroyo to read and understand the
Reproductive Health Care Bills for himself rather than to listen and be alarmed by panicked Asians who are
blinded by their personal religious biases against a Reproductive Health Care law that is pro life and pro
choice as well.
BRADSHAW: But with the Church warning it may try and unseat politicians at the next election if they
back the Reproductive Rights Bill, it has little chance of success. You don?t have to step far outside
Congress to see what ignorance about sex and lack of contraception can lead to. This is a city so
overcrowded that even a railroad track gets called home, no wrong side of the tracks here. The
Congresswoman took us to her constituency outside Manila to see the kind of woman she wants to help.
She introduced us to Marichu, 7 children in a tiny shack plus one working and another put out to adoption.
They're all malnourished. Krisel Lagman-Luistro, who has a nursing degree, thinks some also have TBB.
BRADSHAW: So tell me their names.
MARICHU: Mei Ling, Adanika, Veronica, Danika, Danny Boy, Marlon, Junady.
BRADSHAW: And how much space do you have to bring up your kids in?
KRISEL: (translating) This is her space, this is the whole house.
BRADSHAW: This is it. Tell me, did you intend to have that many children?
KRISEL: (translating) No, it was not planned. I only wanted three but what can we do? They came one
after the other.
BRADSHAW: The family's earnings, a dollar a day. Marichu, mother of 9, tells the congresswoman she
wont use contraception, she's heard it's dangerous and the Catholic church says it's wrong, much to the
dismay of the Catholic congresswoman.
Nine kids, 7 still here, a dollar a day, told by the Pope no contraception. I mean what do you make of all
this?
KRISEL LAGMAN-LUISTRO
Philippines Congresswoman
That's why I cannot just follow what the church is teaching. When we go back to the ethics and morality of
this all, I respect life, I am pro life, but what kind of life. Not just near animal existence, but a life that will
bring these children hope.
Monsignor CRIS BERNARTE: (sermon) There are so many people, agencies and groups playing the role
of false prophets?.
BRADSHAW: The false prophets include the congresswoman and the priest is her old confessor. He
wants the Reproductive Health Bill scrapped.
(sermon continues) ?.defeating of House Bill 4110, they go against the very teachings of the church that
we propagate. They go against the very essence of the Catholic Christian faith.
BRADSHAW: Isn't this the church interfering in politics?
Monsignor CRIS BERNARTE
Albay Cathedral, Philippines
I don?t believe so.
BRADSHAW: Preaching from the pulpit about politics?
BERNARTE: It's not all politics because we are supposed to speak about the truth, this is our prophetic
role, you know.. as priests, as a church, this is our prophetic role. We have to tell all people what the truth
is all about. So anything that has to do with moral issues, the church addresses.
BRADSHAW: And it?s not just the Congresswoman's confessor fighting the bill. In Manila city, the heart
of MetroManila, it's the mayor.
JOSE 'LITO' ATIENZA
Mayor of Manila City
This what we call the Haven for Angels. It's actually a place where we bury the foetus babies we find in the
streets, garbage?
BRADSHAW: Foetuses?
ATIENZA: Foetuses, yes, from garbage heaps, from sidewalks of the city, unclaimed by their irresponsible
mothers, and well they are placed properly in this place.
BRADSHAW: The mayor is filling the caskets in this crypt with aborted foetuses, each, he says, the body
of a tiny person.
So the foetuses are given names.
ATIENZA: Yes, they're actually given names by those who bury them here.
BRADSHAW: Are they blessed or??
ATIENZA: Yes, blessed and then still baptized with a name.
BRADSHAW: Abortion, contraception, evils to the Vatican, evils to the mayor, but this isn't his only
project. He's just declared Manila city the world's first 'pro life' city, and banned all contraceptive services
from city run clinics.
ATIENZA: Families have sacrificed. Contraception is negative. It is counter life, it's contraception.
BRADSHAW: So you don?t teach it.
ATIENZA: We don?t teach contraception.
BRADSHAW: In clinics.
ATIENZA: Definitely not.
BRADSHAW: So here we are in a mega city, growing by the day, by the hour, and in Manila City people
can't get contraception in the city's clinics.
ATIENZA: In Manila what we are promoting is a stronger family unit. We believe that contraceptive
thinking, abortion, are all destroyers of families.
BRADSHAW: So in the city we were shown the no choice clinic, IUDs, pills, condoms, all thrown out.
What's gone in: anti-abortion posters intended to shock. Now you can have any kind of family planning
advice you want, as long as it's natural.
DAHILIG: (teaching class) So as I said, you start charting on the first day of your menstruation?.
BRADSHAW: Counting the calendar or charting the state of vaginal mucous. The nurse in charge of the
clinics is thrilled by Mayor Atienza's ban.
ANNA DAHILIG
Anti-contraception campaigner
Since Mayor Lito Atienza, I haven't seen any pills or condoms or any artificial method here in Manila
anymore.
BRADSHAW: In Metro Manila, with contraception under threat, thousands live from scavenging on
rubbish tips, and Payatas, the garbage mountain, collapsed three years ago killing over 300 people. The
church says the root cause of this appalling poverty is not too many people, it's too few resources unequally
shared out. But women's groups say lack of reproductive rights are causing over population, poverty and
death.
Dr JUNICE MELGAR
Likhaan Women's Group
I think personally that John Paul's teachings are taking a toll on people's lives here, that his admonition
against reproductive health care is actually causing death's of women here from unwanted pregnancy and
even from pregnancy that's complicated.
BRADSHAW: But the Vatican has its own vision of the threat to women. Look at MetroManila this way,
if they'll let you, and it's a city where women in their tens of thousands are sexually exploited for profit, a
city where Catholic ideals of love and the family are undermined by western style hedonism and avarice.
Cardinal ALFONSO LOPEZ TRUJILLO
Pontifical Council for the Family
A time will come when humankind will be ashamed of how it introduced a false lifestyle, just as today we
are ashamed of apartheid, of racial discrimination and of other forms of discrimination. In future times we
will be ashamed of something we managed to defend as if it were a truth, a political truth, a truth imposed
in Parliament regarding the family, regarding human life, sex, where everything is permitted, where
everything is possible.
BRADSHAW: To the Pope this is a war against the permissive society and for a Christian ideal of love, the
family and motherhood. Millions have listened to his message in person as he's travelled to over 120
countries.
Other popes have stayed remote in the Vatican, but even after an attempt on his life, John Paul took his
message to the streets and onto the world's political stage. At the United Nations in New York the Vatican
has special permanent observer status because the Holy City in Rome is officially a state. No other
religious leader is so privileged. The Vatican status has given the Pope the chance to influence the world's
population and development policy, working with some unexpected allies to the irritation of liberal
Catholics.
FRANCES KISSLING
Catholics for a Free Choice
When I go to the United Nations and watch the Vatican representatives operate right on the floor, I see them
going up to Libya, to the Sudan, to Oman, to very often to Muslim countries that have similar conservative
views on women and reproduction and wheeling and dealing just like every other government official in the
world.
POPE JOHN PAUL: (with Reagan) God bless America.
(cheers from crowd)
BRADSHAW: Early in the Pope's reign he had a close ally in US President Ronald Reagan, both
determined to end communism and support family values. Now President George W. Bush, a born again
Christian, is reviving the alliance. He's pleased the Pope by stopping US aid for foreign organisations the
US considers as promoting abortion, and by cutting off 34 million dollars of funding for the United Nations
Population Fund and its family planning programmes. In Rome the ailing John Paul is still leading the
fight, clearly frail but creating new saints, enforcing church doctrine and appointing new cardinals who will
continue his work. But since the early days of his reign the world has been facing a new and terrible crisis.
It is in Africa where the AIDS pandemic has struck hardest, and it's also where the church is ignoring
widely agreed scientific evidence on AIDS. In Kenya someone dies of AIDS every couple of minutes. It's
thought up to a fifth of Kenyans have the HIV virus that causes AIDS, and in Nairobi, when your loved one
dies, this is where you come. There are 16 coffin makers in the street of coffins. A decade ago there were
just 3. The World Health Organisation says the best way to prevent AIDS is abstinence, or monogamy with
an uninfected partner, it also recommends condoms which it says significantly cut the risk of HIV
transmission. But the coffin makers know condoms are unpopular.
COFFIN MAKER: Many young people don?t trust condoms, they argue that dying of AIDS is like being
killed in an accident. People think condoms are not 100% secure and they treat it as a similar risk to a car
crash so they don?t like using them for those reasons.
BRADSHAW: About a third of Kenyans are Catholic and many clinics, hospitals and schools are Catholic
run. But while the church does promote abstinence and fidelity to prevent AIDS it does not promote
condoms. Vatican doctrine is opposed to condoms claiming they break the link between love and
procreation. Some priests get round this, say it's a matter for the conscience but not the Archbishop of
Nairobi.
RAPHAEL NDINGI MWANA A'NZEKI
Archbishop of Nairobi
The Catholic Church does not advocate use of condoms under any circumstances. HIV AIDS is going so
fast because of availability of condoms.
BRADSHAW: You think condoms are causing AIDS?
A'NZEKI: Yes. I'll explain. You give a young Kenyan a condom for him or for her it's a license for
sexuality. They think they're protected and they're not protected. Understand?
BRADSHAW: You don?t think anybody should use?
A'NZEKI: We don?t use? any produced condom, they should not be made at all.
BRADSHAW: They should not be made.
A'NZEKI: Yes.
BRADSHAW: Nobody should use them.
A'NZEKI: Yes.
BRADSHAW: Even people who are not Catholics you think should?..
A'NZEKI: Anybody for that matter. The laws of God affect everybody.
BRADSHAW: Catholics bishops in Kenya produced this pamphlet which claims: "Latex rubber from
which condoms are made does have pores through which viral sized particles can squeeze through during
intercourse." We read this to the World Health Organisation who told us it is: "simply not true".
This is scientific nonsense isn't it?
A'NZEKI: Scientific nonsense?
BRADSHAW: Yes.
A'NZEKI: That is true. First we are defective. What ?? they have?
BRADSHAW: It doesn't say anything about defective condoms. It says: "Latex rubber from which
condoms are made has pores through which viral sized particles?."
A'NZEKI: It means they are not proof? complete 100% proof.
BRADSHAW: But it says latex rubber, it says that viruses can pass through latex rubber. That's nonsense.
A'NZEKI: You go and get the scientists to look at it.
BRADSHAW: Archbishop, with the greatest respect, what I'm suggesting is that you're peddling
superstition and ignorance.
N'ANZEKI: We are not peddling ignorance. We shall be proved the only people who have been right in
this matter in the long-run.
BRADSHAW: The most authoritative recent report is by the US National Institute of Health which
concluded: "In tact condoms are essentially impermeable to the smallest sexually transmitted virus, and
that the consistent use of male condoms protects against HIV/AIDS transmission." The World Health
Organisation insists it is imperative to continue promoting condoms for HIV prevention.
In 1996 Cardinal Otunga, who is the highest ranking Catholic in the country, led a symbolic burning of
condoms and safe sex literature. In Africa millions face death from AIDS, yet here the church is burning
condoms. The bonfire was attended by a top Catholic gynaecologist.
Dr STEPHEN KARANJA
Catholic gynaecologist
It was a condom bonfire. We had more than 5-10 thousand people, young people, old people, simple men
from the streets.
BRADSHAW: Did you go?
KARANJA: Who, myself? I was there. I have to be there. I lead by example. We had discussions about
the condom. We had scientific presentations, we had social presentations, then we had?. How do you
want to call it? We had a symbolic burning of the evil that is the condom.
BRADSHAW: But does anyone take any notice of the Catholic attack on condoms? A day's drive from
Nairobi we've come to Lwak, by the shores of Lake Victoria. With no national health service or welfare
state in Kenya, the Catholic Church plays a vital role in curing, caring and educating, just as it does across
the world. Sister Victorine Akoth runs the Catholic clinic, and, like other nuns here, she has her own
painful experience of the AIDS epidemic, she's lost a brother and a sister to the virus. Girls are particularly
affected here, as many as four out of ten, thought to be the highest infection rate in the world. But the
Church's anti-condom stance has a strong grip in Lwak.
Attached to the medical clinic is an HIV testing centre and the man running it has to take notice of what the
Catholics who run the church say about condoms.
GORDON WAMBI
HIV Counsellor
What I tell people about condoms is that when condoms are used properly they prevent the spread of
HIV/AIDS.
BRADSHAW: Do you hand them out?
WAMBI: I don?t hand them out because I don?t stock them here.
BRADSHAW: Because?
WAMBI: Because we are in the Catholic premises and the Catholics do not maybe encourage the use of
condoms.
BRADSHAW: They don?t encourage the use of condoms.
WAMBI: Yes.
BRADSHAW: They don?t allow it in fact.
WAMBI: Yes.
BRADSHAW: How do you feel about that?
WAMBI: Well it is something that is not good but there is nothing we can do about it.
BRADSHAW: So what did the nuns say about condoms top who have already got the virus? Sister
Victorine invited us to go and see one of her patients.
Sister, just explain where we're going and who we're going to see.
Sister VICTORINE AKOTH
St Elizabeth Health Clinic
We are going to see a man who has been having AIDS for quite a long time, it is now already 6 years.
BRADSHAW: The patient with AIDS was Mathias, a choirmaster and helper of the church clinic. Inside
he suggested we start with a prayer.
MATHIAS: So we're going to pray a bit?..
BRADSHAW: Ill for six years and barely able to afford the medicines which keep him alive, Mathias
hopes that his wife, Emadine, has so far managed to escape infection. I first asked Mathias whether his
drugs were helping.
MATHIAS OTIENDO
Choirmaster
Yes, so they're working, it is responding in me.
BRADSHAW: Good.
MATHIAS: It is expensive but I'm just trying as much as I can.
BRADSHAW: Sister, what's your advice to Mathias and his wife?
SISTER AKOTH: My advice to him is only that they may keep praying because now there is nothing they
can do about it. He is already sick. If the wife has accepted the situation then they may live.. continue to
love each other, be faithful to one another until the day? their last day on earth.
BRADSHAW: Tell me how, Mathias, how this has affected your marriage. It must be difficult for you and
your wife.
MATHIAS: It's difficult but we have to control now because if you don?t control we know the risk. I know
that we have so many things, we have things like condom and me I can't use condom.
BRADSHAW: You can't use condoms?
MATHIAS: No.
BRADSHAW: Tell me why not.
MATHIAS: The church tells us that it's not 100% safe that we are? that there's some holes in it.
BRADSHAW: Holes in the condoms.
MATHIAS: ? in the condoms.
BRADSHAW: Sister, what are we to make of Mathias' story?
SISTER AKOTH: They aren't 100% useful because they can rupture, they're just made of rubber, they can
rupture, and as you see, there is some pores in the condom that the virus can pass through. That is very
true. So I seriously side with him that the option he has taken not to be with the wife, he will have to
control himself is very good.
BRADSHAW: Is there a place for condoms if they are used properly? If they work and they're used
properly, is there ever a reason to use condoms?
SISTER AKOTH: I don?t see a reason of using them.
STEVE BRADSHAW
What's really heartbreaking is that the sisters here seem kind, they seem intelligent, they're hard working
and they could be the front line in the war against AIDS, and yet what they're doing is peddling rumour and
superstition, and the question is really, who has made them believe it? We've come across what the WHO
calls "The dangerous allegation that condoms let HIV through before." The Archbishop of Nairobi had put
his name to a pamphlet making the claim, and we'd heard the story from Catholics in two other continents,
from the Head of the Pro Life Clinics in Manila City.
DAHILIG: What's wrong with condoms? You see condoms they are made of rubber, so even the AIDS
virus can pass through the pores of the condom.
BRADSHAW: And we'd heard the same claim from the Cardinal in Nicaragua.
CARDINAL OBANDO Y BRAVO: Now studying genetics we were told that AIDS can be transmitted
through the doctor's surgical glove which is less porous than a condom.
BRADSHAW: Clearly these extraordinary claims are being made by influential Catholics across the world,
so we asked the Pope's spokesman on the family whether they are also the official view of the Vatican.
Is it the position of the Vatican that the virus, the HIV virus can pass through the condom?
Cardinal ALFONSO LOPEZ TRUJILLO
Pontifical Council for the Family
Yes, yes, because this is something which the scientific community accepts, and doctors know what we are
saying. You cannot talk about safe sex. One should speak of the human value, about the family, and about
fidelity.
BRADSHAW: But I have spoken to the World Health Organisation and they say it is simply not true that
the HIV virus can pass through latex from which condoms are made?
TRUJILLO: Well they are wrong about that, no dialogue is possible at that level, scientifically speaking,
because this is an easily recognisable fact.
BRADSHAW: In Kenya the Vatican's unyielding rejection of condoms is affecting real lives. Here in
Kisumu Irene already has AIDS. She's telling a group of unwed mothers in a community project what it's
like.
IRENE: Take it seriously, it's hell. My dear sisters, it's hell.
BRADSHAW: This isn't a Catholic project so condoms are available, though with the propaganda against
them there's been a local backlash.
JOAB OTHATCHER
Teenage Mothers' Association of Kenya
We need people who are working especially with teenage mothers and child prostitutes, people who are
already engaging in sex, are actually being seen as promoting promiscuity because we are telling them if
you cannot? if you haven't reached a point where you are strong enough to abstain, then you'd better
protect yourself rather than getting exposed.
BRADSHAW: Some of the women who work here say Catholic propaganda against condoms is partly to
blame for their HIV positive status.
EUNIC ATOGO ATIENO
When I engaged in sex I didn't use a condom. I can remember my headmaster one day was trying to tell us
about the condom but when we went to church I heard something the priest was saying that condom is not
good for people, and in my life I say that if I could have had enough information on the condom use, I
couldn't have contacted the virus.
OTHATCHER: I think that the Pope perhaps is not in touch with the real problem. I know, working with
young girls in this programme, I know how bad HIV/AIDS has hit our adolescent girls, and I feel it. It is
not so easy for someone sitting in Rome to know what happens on the ground. Most of the girls that we
have here are girls from the Catholic background, and yet they are infected, they are HIV positive. If they
used a condom one time it would have saved their lives. Yet they cry and say it is too late. And we know it
is too late because they are already infected, and that's my appeal to the Pope. You can do something. You
can say something that will come down to the church and the young people of the world will be saved. We
are losing a generation of young people.
BRADSHAW: Pope John Paul II has been fighting passionately against contraception and abortion since
he was elected 25 years ago this week. A campaign to uphold an ideal of love, motherhood and the value of
life, yet his opponents say these same teachings have cause distress and suffering. In countries where
Catholic belief counts, the Vatican's teaching can still be a matter of life and death.
_________
Next week on Panorama, who should go to university and who should pay? Two teams put the
controversial fees policy to the test with the Education Secretary there to defend the government's plans. If
you want to find out more about tonight's programme, visit our website: www.bbc.co.uk/panorama.
CREDITS
Reporter
STEVE BRADSHAW
Camera
Dean Johnson
Nick Hughes
Ian Kennedy
Sound
ALEX KIMANZI
Incidental Music
WARBOY
VT Editor
Gareth Williams
Colourist
JOHN DIXON
Dubbing Mixer
ANDREW SEARS
Production Co-ordinator
EMMA HILL
Production Assistant
SOPHIE LHERNOULT
Web Producer
ADAM FLINTER
Film Research
NATALIA ASHESHOV
AMANDA VAUGHAN-BARRATT
Graphic Design
KEY YIP LAM
ALEX NEWBERY
Production Manager
GINNY WILLIAMS
Unit Manager
LAURA GOVETT
Film Editor
ROB MOORE
Assistant Producers
LUCY WILLMORE
LOUISE TURNER
DEBORAH DWEK
Producer
CHRIS WOODS
Deputy Editors
ANDREW BELL
SAM COLLYNS
Editor
Mike Robinson
6
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Transcribed: 1-Stop Express Tel: 020 7724 7953 Fax: 020 7402 8434 E-mail: onestopexpress@hotmail.com
