VATICAN, July 12, 2002 (LSN.ca) Despite running 26% of all AIDS-treatment centers around the world, the Catholic Church has been excluded from the 14th world conference on AIDS. Archbishop Javier Lozano Barragan, the Vatican’s top prelate dealing with health care issues, commented on the exclusion from the UN-led conference in a recent interview.
UN officials, he said, “have been saying the same thing constantly for the past dozen years,” despite the fact that their approach has produced “no visible results.” On the contrary, “The number of AIDS victims is rising, in a terribly important trend.”
Catholic World News reports that the archbishop accused wealthy nations of concealing the facts about the AIDS epidemic. “They tell us that poverty is the principle cause,” he said, “when in fact Europe and the United States are largely responsible for exporting AIDS to poor countries through sexual tourism and the spread of libertine attitudes.”
For more see the Catholic World News coverage at: https://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=28068