No to a black Pope

Soon the Catholic world will have a new pope. For many, this is a non-affair; there is a bizarre spectacle that takes place at the Vatican where votes are made, smoke comes out a chimney, and in a small amount of time we have a new person to take over wearing the most famous funny hat.

Yet there are real consequences to the outcome. While some may support the ascendance of a black pope from Africa, this would be detrimental to Africa and to the fight against AIDS.

Spiritually speaking, Africa is a superpower -- both the world's largest manufacturer and consumer of religion.  In 2002 the Daily Telegraph said that an "African papacy is the logical outcome" given that the majority of Catholics now live in the developing world, and in particular, the African Catholic Church "has grown by 20 times since 1980”. Thirteen percent of the Catholic world population is in Africa. Africa can't help but seem an oasis of vibrant faith for the Catholic Church that is seeing a steady decline in Europe and America.

According to Financial Times, an African such as Francis Arinze would "boost the popularity" of the Church, which is facing strong competition in Africa from Pentecostal, Baptist, and Evangelical churches. Yet he is not alone. In the next conclave, Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana has been called "the most likely" candidate from Africa. A lot of this comes down to their respective ages with Arinze seeming a poor choice at the age of 80.

Either one of these Cardinals would strengthen the position of the Catholic Church in Africa, which is far from a positive outcome.

In the past 30 years, concurrent with a tripling of church membership in Africa to almost 150 million people, the AIDS pandemic has ravaged the continent, killing millions, orphaning more than 11 million children, and infecting more than 22 million with HIV - including 91 percent of the world’s HIV-positive children.

In 2011, an estimated 1.8 million people in the region became newly infected. An estimated 1.2 million adults and children died of AIDS, accounting for three quarters of the world’s AIDS deaths in 2011.

Pope Ratzinger has said that condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and Aids and could make the problem worse. The Roman Catholic church encourages sexual abstinence and fidelity to prevent the disease from spreading.

Through their myopic insistence on abstinence as the only solution, the Catholic Church has been an obstacle to the urgent project of putting in place institutions of prevention, harm reduction, and safer sex.

The Catholic campaign against condoms has included a bishop claiming, according to a BBC report in 2007, that some condoms from Europe are purposely infected with HIV to kill Africans. The synod general secretary for Africa at one point claimed that condoms don’t work well in tropical heat. Church leaders assert that condoms give people a false sense of security, which leads them to have more sex, thereby increasing their chances of infection.

All of this ignores what has become an international scientific consensus—that prevention is the key to stemming the epidemic, and condoms properly and consistently used are an essential part of prevention.

The spiritual and institutional weight of the Catholic Church continues to be thrown on the side of the virus. The result can be measured in the deaths of Africans. The virus of Catholic fundamentalism infects that beleaguered continent. 

NOTE: It’s amazing to me that this is an issue at all.
If you want to minimize your chance of getting AIDS, then use a condom.
If you’re not monogamous, then use contraception.
If you’re having sex and you want to protect yourself, then use contraception.Look at how easy that is. 

Life is so much better when the Pope isn’t your sex ed teacher.