LUANDA, Angola — Some Roman Catholic priests in Africa have children, and nuns counsel patients to use condoms against the scourge of AIDS. The faithful consult medicine men even though the church condemns that as witchcraft.
As Pope Benedict XVI makes his first pilgrimage this week to the continent that has the world's fastest-growing congregation of Catholics, the church faces enormous challenges despite its growing presence here.
The number of Catholics has ballooned from fewer than 2 million to nearly 140 million over the last century, while Africa also is ordaining priests at a higher rate than anywhere else. Ordinations rose nearly 30 percent in 2007, the Vatican reported last month.
The pope travels today to Angola, where Portuguese missionaries baptized Africa's first Catholic convert in 1491. He says he hopes to inspire the faithful to work for social justice and fight the hunger and disease that afflict millions on the continent.
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But since he stepped off the papal plane Tuesday, attention has focused on the pope's statements rejecting condoms as a way to stop the spread of HIV in Africa. Three-quarters of all AIDS deaths worldwide in 2007 were in sub-Saharan Africa, where 22 million people are infected with HIV, according to UNAIDS.
Luzia Gaspar, a Catholic nurse who trains midwives outside Luanda, prays the pope will reconsider.
"It's very dangerous. If we do not counsel people to use condoms, we are condemning them to almost certain death," she said.
This dissident view is held among Catholics throughout Africa, including in the church hierarchy.
Some say how the debate is resolved could be the key to controlling AIDS in Africa, and to the continued credibility of the church.
To protest the ban on condoms, 14 South African nuns who work with AIDS victims formed Sisters for Justice. And the bishops of southern Africa years ago said condoms should be used by married couples if one spouse is HIV-positive.
South African Bishop Kevin Dowling, who says he is heartbroken by the sight of dying women with emaciated babies, says people at risk of spreading HIV "should use a condom in order to prevent the transmission of potential death to another."
But in his first public pronouncement on condoms, Benedict gave no quarter. "You can't resolve (the AIDS crisis) with the distribution of condoms. On the contrary, it increases the problem" by promoting promiscuity, he told reporters on his chartered jet as he headed from Rome to Africa.
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