One Cardinal's "Lesser Evil" is Another's....

I have the fulltext of the conversation in Italian and will parse it sometime today, but the BBC's already running with the story: in the new edition of L'Espresso -- Magister's publication -- Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the Jesuit archbishop-emeritus of Milan, has made public his support for the use of condoms to combat the spread HIV/AIDS.

Of course, this flies in the face of relatively stringent Vatican condemnations of the option.

Martini said that in couples where one had HIV/Aids, which could pass to the partner, the use of condoms was "a lesser evil"....

In [the interview] he says that the fight against Aids, which has caused more than three million deaths, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, must be pursued by all available means.

The Vatican has made no official comment on the article, in which the cardinal also raises the possibility of single mothers adopting abandoned children.

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