The Vatican on Tuesday clarified the remarks of Pope Benedict XVI. Again.

In what has become an excruciating ritual for frustrated supporters of the Church, the Vatican issued a lengthy statement to explain what the pontiff meant, this time in comments he made for a book-length interview titled "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times." The Vatican said Benedict's comments about condom use had been "repeatedly manipulated for ends and interests which are entirely foreign," The Washington Post reports.

In the book, released last month, Benedict said condom use in specific instances, such as for male prostitutes seeking to prevent the spread of HIV, could be a first step to a more moral sexuality, a comment that has fueled wide debate about whether church doctrine on the subject was shifting.

Within the morally degraded context of prostitution, said the statement from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "anyone who uses a condom in order to diminish the risk posed to another person is intending to reduce the evil connected with his or her immoral activity." However, it said, that in no way amounted to a change in doctrine or a justification of condoms as a "lesser evil."


The statement was the latest installment in a saga of confusion that has thrown the public relations challenges of Benedict's pontificate into sharp relief. The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, published an excerpt of the pope's remarks ahead of the book's release date Nov. 20, though the newspaper's translated account changed the gender of the hypothetical prostitute to female - a significant distinction, given that the church considers contraception a major sin.

Read the entire story at washingtonpost.com