The News: By the time Pope Benedict XIV landed in Cameroon, the world-mudia was already reporting that he had blamed HIV/AIDs on condom use. "Pope says condoms make AIDs problem worse" hollered one news feed headline, although the Associated Press text was a tad less hysterical. According to the report: "Pope Benedict XVI said condoms are not the answer to the AIDS epidemic in Africa and can make the problem worse,"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

The Note: It would be astonishing in the Pope actually said that condoms increase the AIDs epidemic. According to the Vatican News Service the pope said:

"It is my belief believe that the most effective presence on the front in the battle against HIV/AIDS is in fact the Catholic Church and her institutions. ... The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere slogans. If the soul is lacking, if Africans do not help one another, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms; quite the contrary, we risk worsening the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanisation of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with the suffering, a readiness - even through personal sacrifice - to stand by those who suffer".