Roman Catholic leaders in Africa have pledged to step up their involvement in the fight against the continent's AIDS pandemic, but steadfastly refuse to endorse the use of condoms to fight the disease.
"The church says one must be faithful in marriage and save oneself for marriage," the bishop of Thies in Senegal, Alexandre Mbengue, told AFP at the triennial Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, being held here in the Senegalese capital.
"We cannot say to people, to our youth, to all those who want to use condoms: 'Go ahead, use them' and thus cave in to the current trend," he said.
According to the UN agency UNAIDS, sub-Saharan Africa is hardest hit by AIDS, being home to more than two-thirds of those infected with HIV or full-blown AIDS worldwide -- 29.4 million out of 42 million.
Nevertheless, the church "cannot condone the use of condoms -- indeed, we are campaigning against just that," said the archbishop of Lagos, Anthony Okogie, recently named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II.
The archbishop of Kinshasa, Dominique Bulamatari, agreed, saying: "Using condoms as a means of preventing AIDS can only lead to sexual promiscuity."
His counterpart from Kumasi, Ghana, Peter Sarpong, echoed that sentiment almost verbatim, saying that condoms "facilitate sexual licentiousness."
Despite the churchmen's tough words against condoms, Farouk Mohammed, head of Nigeria's AIDS Alliance -- a non-religious, non-profit organisation -- said he has observed a softening of the church's position in the fight against AIDS.
"Excluding condom use, to which the church is still opposed, it is involved now in building awareness in and mobilising its members ... it even encourages them to take part in rallies and seminars on the dangers of the disease," he said.
And a few minority voices among African church leaders condone condom use and urge Africa's Catholics to change their way of thinking to bring it more into line with the times.
Democratic Republic of Congo priest Joseph Mpundu, who runs a non-profit organisation involved in the fight against AIDS in the vast central African country, said: "We must not blind ourselves to reality: the condom is one way of stopping AIDS progressing."
Even Thies's archbishop Mbengue said, in a personal capacity: "If abstinence is not entirely possible" -- such as in the case of a married couple in which one spouse is HIV-positive -- "it's better to use an artificial means than to kill oneself."
"That's not the official position of the church, which is constant, but I say it personally, in the name of common sense," Mbengue said.
Gabon's Catholic church "takes the line of the Vatican" but "does not condemn the condom," said Father Jean Kazadi, coordinator of the central African episcopal conference.
"The condom is a stopgap, a lesser evil, but not the solution," said the bishop of Port Louis, Mauritius, Maurice Piat.
"The church's preachings are not about condoms, but about the urgency of fighting AIDS," he added, urging that the battle against the killer disease be waged "not with rubber, but with human resources."
The symposium, which opened on October 1, ends Saturday.