PNG bishops say condoms okay for some .

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.

Explaining the discrepancy with papal teaching, Cote said: "We also have a law - you should not kill.

"If you are infected and you have sex then you don't protect yourself, you will give the sickness to the other one," he said.

"So there's a moral responsibility that they are protected.

"There are many of those cases. The rule is there for the lesser evil.

"We don't promote (the use of condoms).

"When it's needed, OK, but we don't spread them (condoms) to everybody and distribute them. If the government wants to do it OK."

PNG has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS infection in the Pacific with heterosexual transmission the main driver.

Around two per cent of the four million-strong population are feared HIV-positive.

Australia's development agency, AusAID, and PNG's National AIDS Council strongly promote condom use even though some Christian leaders say it promotes promiscuity.

Within the Catholic Church in PNG, some bishops are stricter on condoms than are Cote and others.

"When we have a bishops' conference we see that not everybody agrees and even in Rome they disagree among themselves," Cote said.

This month PNG cabinet minister Puka Temu told an HIV Prevention summit in Port Moresby that church groups should put aside their "religious and moral biases" and give 100 per cent support to condom use.

His call sparked angry retorts from church leaders including Bishop Francesco Sarego, President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference in PNG.

He said last week Temu was asking the churches to act against their consciences.

"The best defence against HIV is found among the families of our country," he said.

"Faithfulness in marriage protects families from destruction."

It was incorrect to claim condoms would solve the problem and churches could not be expected to become agents for dispensing condoms, Sarego said.

Anglican Bishop of Port Moresby Peter Fox said his church supported condom use but Temu's statement was "unfortunate" because it did not recognise the diversity of views among churches.

Some fundamentalist pastors regularly preach that HIV/AIDS infection is punishment from on high for having extra-marital sex.