Catholic Church Opposes Carnival Condom Hand-Out

The Catholic Church in Brazil has launched a full scale attack on plans to hand out millions of free condoms when the staunchly Catholic country's notoriously licentious Carnival kicks off next week.

Brazil's health ministry will launch its new marketing campaign to promote safe sex on Sunday in Rio de Janeiro and begin the giveaway of 35 million free condoms on the city's streets.

Carnival in Brazil is a five-day celebration before the period of Lent gets under way. The festival has become synonymous with excessive dancing, drinking and sex.

"Is this going to help? I don't think so," Cardinal Geraldo Majella, president of Brazil's Catholic Bishops Council, told journalists in Brasilia on Friday, according to Reuters.

Brazil has successfully slowed the transmission rate of sexually transmitted diseases over the last few years by giving out free condoms. The condoms will be handed out this year with a view to continuing this rate of decline.

The Catholic Church, however, is a firm opponent of birth control and contraceptives, preaching instead abstinence from sexual relations until marriage.

It has also long questioned Brazil's safe-sex programme, which has made condoms available for years in health centres and in some high schools, and been praised by the United Nations as a model for other developing countries.

"Rules need to be established. If this is the sex education they want ... on this we cannot agree," said Cardinal Majella.

This year's Carnival slogan is tipped to be: "With condoms, the good feeling goes on after the party is over."

Soon after the Carnival's end, Pope Benedict will make his first visit to Brazil in May.