A television documentary by the British Broadcasting Corporation (Panorama — Sex and the Holy City) has reported that the Roman Catholic church is claiming that condoms can not stop the spread of HIV. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, President of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, told the BBC that as “the AIDS virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoan ... [it] can easily pass through the ... condom.” Pope John Paul II opposes any form of contraception that breaks the link between sex and procreation. The Roman Catholic church teaches abstinence as the best way to prevent the spread of HIV. The Archbishop of Nairobi, Kenya, said that “AIDS ... has grown so fast because of the availability of condoms,” which promote promiscuity (Panorama).

To counter these claims, the World Health Organization (WHO) refers to a study carried out in 2001 by the WHO and the United States National Institutes of Health, which showed that condoms are 90% effective against HIV/AIDS. The remaining 10% of cases of transmission are caused by incorrect use. Condoms are “essentially impermeable to particles the size of [sexually transmitted disease] pathogens” (Fadela Chaib, WHO). The Roman Catholic position is “dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people,” said Chaib.

Meanwhile, in the United States, President Bush has received criticism over his stipulation that one-third of the funding for his anti-AIDS initiative is used to encourage sexual abstinence until marriage. An article in The New York Times says it “looks as if the administration is more interested in showing that it shares the Christian Right's sexual squeamishness than in fighting AIDS.”