Vatican spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, has described a resolution passed by the Belgian parliament condemning Pope Benedict for saying the use of condoms could worsen the spread of AIDS as "astonishing" for a democratic state. The resolution passed by the Belgian parliament late on Thursday called on the Belgian envoy to the Vatican to lodge a protest over the pontiff's "unacceptable" comments, ABS-CBN News reports.
It ordered the government to "react strongly against any state or organisation that in the future brings into doubt the benefit of using condoms to prevent transmission of the AIDS virus."
But Fr Lombardi said he was shocked.
"(It's) astonishing, given that it appears obvious in any democratic state that the Holy Father and the Church are free to express their own positions," he said.
The Belgian resolution brought the controversy to the brink of a diplomatic incident between two sovereign states, ABS-CBN says.
Fr Lombardi asked whether Belgium's lawmakers had paid enough attention to the pope's arguments when they overwhelmingly approved the resolution, and whether they had got their information from the "non-objective" Western media.
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(Source: CTHN)