Still Running Off at the Keyboard

Some Catholic bishops are bucking the Vatican's strict line by allowing church clinics in PNG to hand out condoms to infected people to slow an AIDS epidemic raging on Australia's doorstep.

If one of two partners is infected and they cannot abstain from sex, then it is wise to provide condoms, said Bishop Gilles Cote, a French Canadian who heads the Daru-Kiunga diocese in Western Province.

Rome bans the use of condoms outright and insists that abstinence is the best way to combat the disease.

However, some church workers on the epidemic frontline see things much differently as they deal with daily ravages of AIDS in communities where sex outside marriage and multiple sex partners are commonplace.

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