NB: THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT: BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS- HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ........................................................................ PANORAMA SEX and the HOLY CITY RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 12:10:03 ........................................................................ 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 _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Transcribed: 1-Stop Express Tel: 020 7724 7953 Fax: 020 7402 8434 E-mail: onestopexpress@hotmail.com