Annie Lennox dismisses Popes condom stance

Annie Lennox believes churches could do “tremendous harm” where they preach against the use of condoms in countries with high rates of HIV and Aids.

Opening the Edinburgh Festival of Politics earlier this week, the former Eurythmics singer said that Pope Benedict XVI’s recent denunciation of condoms as a means of fighting HIV and AIDS did not make sense.

“They are directly connected with the community at large so of course churches can do a tremendous amount. I know many do,” she said.

“But then again they can do tremendous harm because when the Pope goes to a country in Africa and tells them that they shouldn’t be using condoms when we know that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease, I don’t think that makes sense at all. It is very confusing.”

In an emotional address to the festival, Lennox also criticised the media for sidelining the HIV and Aids pandemic in favour of covering stories celebrities.

“I would have to say that we are distracted by the celebrity culture we all live. Whether someone is going out with someone else, or their marriage is breaking down, or they have a new hairstyle, seems to be far more interesting and sellable in the press than actual human rights,” she said.

“There are issues of babies dying, poverty, of diseases — these things are not sexy or sellable.”

The Pope waded into controversy earlier in the year when he said ahead of his first official visit to Africa that distributing condoms had not only failed to stop the spread of HIV and Aids but could even make it worse.

Whilst many activists and even some governments criticised the Pope, there were some in the scientific community who backed him.

Edward C Green, a senior Aids researcher at Harvard University, said that evidence on the spread of Aids supported the Pope's position while Catholic Bishop George Nkuo in Cameroon said that distributing condoms had only encouraged people to be more promiscuous out of the belief that using them “makes everything safe”.