About Us

Selling sex for food, water and AIDS - onlinecatholics.com.au - 08/12/04

The head of a Catholic Aids agency in Melbourne has written to the Minister for Health charging that a Catholic priest be removed from his position on the Australian government's HIV/AIDS advisory subcommittee, following a horrifying report from Tanzania yesterday.

A new study by HelpAge International has revealed incidents where Tanzanian women aged more than 60 years are lured into unsafe sex in exchange for fish or a bucket of water.

The report, titled "The Cost of Love", highlights the forgotten plight of the elderly, who are exposed to high risks of HIV/AIDS infection while caring for their sick children and grandchildren at home.
President of the Australian AIDS Fund Inc., Brian Haill, said that the Tanzanian story showed the dishonesty of those who argued that AIDS was a problem of culture and/or loose morals.
"The Tanzanian report clearly demonstrates the urgency - and morality - of advocating the use of condoms in certain situations," Mr Haill told Online Catholics.

The elderly Tanzanian women go to the seashore to buy fish directly from fishermen, but on days when they have no money, they offer sex to the fishermen in order to get fish to feed the grandchildren. These women are providing 90 percent of the healthcare for up to 500,000 AIDS orphans in Tanzania, plus their sick parents, according to the report.

"So where does that leave Fr Michael Kelly and his 'culture not condoms' line? [ Online Catholics , issue #28 ]. "What would be his solution for the grandmothers of Tanzania?"

"All females, infants to pensioners, are vulnerable and for a whole host of reasons, culture being just one of them. Infants are sexually used by desperate and infected men in South Africa under the impression that sex with a virgin will cure them, while now even the elderly are viewed as prey," said Mr Haill.

Haill has now formally written to Health Minister Abbott to ask him why Fr Kelly should remain as an HIV/AIDS adviser given that his views against Government policy were being widely dissemminated on a number of news outlets, including Vatican Radio.

It is understood that Kate Jordan, a spokeswoman for the Minister, told Mr Haill last night that his letter was still being studied.

In a related development, the Catholic UK aid agency CAFOD announced that it proposed "a third, middle-ground approach known as ABC - abstain, be faithful, use a condom .' An article on CAFOD's website claims that this 'third way' is supported by Catholic moral theology and makes an oblique reference to the principle of double effect. "Traditional moral theology allows for an approach in which individuals subscribe to clearly identified ideals but sometimes have to make choices that fall short of these."

However this week the Australian aid agency, Caritas, confirmed that it did not support programmes which involved the distribution of condoms.