Certainly the pope did not mention ‘condoms’ as such (he never would), but this initial declaration stirred up emotions around the world. In September 1990 and again in March 1993, he would deliver another such speech, on African soil this time, in Tanzania and then in Uganda, two of the countries most touched by the pandemic, adding ‘that the sexual restriction imposed by chastity is the only safe and virtuous way to put an end to the tragic wound of AIDS’. The pope never tolerated any exceptions to his rule, even in the case of asymptomatic married couples (one of whose partners is HIV positive), even though at this time one Ugandan in eight was contaminated by the virus.
This position would be hotly contested not only by the scientific and medical community, but also by influential cardinals like Carlo Maria Martini and Godfried Danneels (the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Lustiger, would, with inimitable casuistry, defend John Paul II’s position while proposing exceptions as the ‘lesser evil’).
At the UN, Renato Martino went on to launch a virulent campaign against ‘safe sex’ and the use of condoms. In 1987, when a committee of American bishops published a document saying that it was necessary to inform populations about ways of protecting themselves, Martino intervened at a high level to have the text banned. He then worked to ensure that AIDS prevention did not appear in any UN documents or declarations. A little later, he used a supposedly scientific article, which was distributed on a massive scale by Cardinal López Trujillo, to denounce the dangers of ‘sex without risks’ and declare the existence of many infections contracted through protected sexual relations. In 2001, just before the end of his mission, when the episcopal conference in South Africa published a pastoral letter justifying the use of condoms in the case of asymptomatic married couples, Martino agitated once again to try and silence the South African bishops.
‘Condoms aggravate the AIDS problem’. The phrase is one of the most famous from the pontificate of Benedict XVI. It has, admittedly, often been distorted. Let us briefly recall the context and the exact wording. On 17 March 2009, the pope was travelling to Yaoundé in Cameroon, on his first trip to Africa. On the Alitalia plane, in a press conference that had been organized in minute detail, he spoke. The question, prepared in advance, was asked by a French journalist. In his reply, after hailing the work of Catholics in the struggle against AIDS in Africa, Benedict XVI added that the illness could not be defeated only with money: ‘If there is no soul,’ he said, ‘if Africans don’t help each other, it will not be possible to defeat this scourge by distributing condoms; on the contrary, it risks increasing the problem.’
‘If we are honest, we must acknowledge that the pope’s response, taken as a whole, is quite coherent. What causes the problem is just one phrase: the idea that the condom is “worse”, that it “aggravates” things. It is only this idea of “worse” that is wrong,’ Federico Lombardi, spokesman to Benedict XVI, admits. (Lombardi, who was with the pope on the plane, confirms to me that the question about AIDS had been cleared and prepared in advance.)
The phrase immediately caused an outcry on five continents: Benedict XVI was criticized, mocked, even ridiculed. The presidents of many countries, prime ministers and countless doctors with global reputations, many of them Catholic, denounced his ‘irresponsible words’ for the first time. Several cardinals spoke of it as a serious ‘blunder’ or an ‘error’. Others, such as the association Act Up, accused the pope of being quite simply ‘a criminal’.
‘Bishops and priests who already used anti-condom language saw themselves as being legitimated by Benedict XVI’s phrase. So they delivered large numbers of homilies in their churches against the anti-AIDS struggle and, of course, some of them insisted that the illness was a punishment from God to punish homosexuals,’ I am told by an African priest who is also a diplomat from the holy see (and whom I met more or less by chance in a café in the Borgo in Rome).
Often these Catholic bishops and priests made common cause with homophobic American pastors, evangelicals or imams who were opposed to gay rights and condoms as a way of combatting AIDS.
According to this Vatican diplomat, the nuncios on the ground notably had the task of keeping an eye on the African bishops and what they had to say on homosexuality and AIDS. They had to indicate the slightest ‘deviance’ to the holy see. Under John Paul II and Benedict XVI, a priest had only to approve of the distribution of condoms, or appear favourable to homosexuality, to lose all hope of becoming a bishop.
The famous lawyer Alice Nkom explained to me that in her country, Cameroon, where I pursued investigations, there was a ‘real witch-hunt against homosexuals’. And yet, she insists, the bishop Samuel Kéda adopted a position in favour of the criminalization of homosexuality, and sought to punish people with AIDS. In Uganda, where a gay activist was assassinated, the Catholic archbishop Cyprian Lwanga opposed the depenalization of homosexuality. In Malawi, Kenya and Nigeria, representatives of the Catholic Church distinguished themselves with homophobic and anti-condom speeches (as confirmed by a detailed report by Human Rights Watch, which was passed to Pope Francis in 2013).
A morally unjust policy with counter-productive effects, as I was told during an interview in Geneva, by the Malian Michel Sidibé, director general of the UN agency UNAIDS: ‘In sub-Saharan Africa, the AIDS virus is transmitted chiefly by heterosexual relations. We can therefore assert – and we have numbers to support this – that homophobic laws, as well as being an assault human rights, are completely useless. The more homosexuals hide, the more vulnerable they are. In the end, by reinforcing stigmatization, one runs the risk of halting the battle against AIDS, and increasing infection among vulnerable populations.’
Among many homophobic African prelates, two cardinals stand out. They have attracted attention over the past few years with their speeches against condoms and homosexuality: the South African Wilfrid Napier and the Guinean Robert Sarah, who were created cardinals by John Paul II and Benedict XVI at a time when being anti-gay was a plus on a CV. Both have since been marginalized by Francis.
Before becoming a homophobe, Wilfrid Napier was a long-time defender of human rights. His career speaks for itself: the current Archbishop of Durban was a militant in favour of the black cause and the democratic process in South Africa. At the head of the South African Episcopal Conference, he played a major role at the time of negotiations to put an end to apartheid.
And yet Napier disputed the advances suggested by Nelson Mandela about the depenalization of homosexuality, the introduction of the idea of ‘sexual orientation’ in the constitution of the country and, subsequently, the establishment of same-sex marriage.
Several witness statements that I collected in Johannesburg, Soweto and Pretoria identify Napier as a ‘genuine homophobe’ and a ‘radical anti-condom militant’. In 2013, the Archbishop of Durban denounced the proposed laws in favour of gay marriage that were spreading around the world: ‘It’s a new form of slavery. The United States tell us, you won’t have money until you distribute condoms and legalize homosexuality.’ (Let’s not forget that gay marriage was adopted in South Africa before the United States.)
These interventions provoked intense reactions. The Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, holder of the Nobel Peace Prize, opposed Napier head-on (without mentioning him by name), denouncing churches that are ‘obsessed by homosexuality’ when there was a serious AIDS pandemic. Tutu several times compared homophobia to racism, even saying: ‘If God was homophobic, as some people claim, I would not pray to that God.’
The writer Peter Machen, director of the Durban Film Festival, also criticized Cardinal Napier, with heavy innuendo: ‘Isn’t it a little hard to tell, Archbishop, who is gay, when most of your colleagues wear dresses?’
Napier produced more and more anti-gay declarations; for example, denouncing ‘homosexual activity’ within the Church – the cause, in his view, of sexual abuse: ‘Moving away from the law of God always leads to unhappiness,’ he stated.
Napier’s obsessive homophobia
encountered resistance even in the ranks of the South African Church. The Jesuits of Johannesburg criticized the cardinal’s position in their private exchanges with the apostolic nuncio (according to a first-hand source), and as far as I have been able to tell, they closed their eyes and tacitly accepted distributions of condoms.
Judge Edwin Cameron was equally critical. A friend of Nelson Mandela (who had lost a son to AIDS) Cameron is one of the most respected figures in South Africa. A militant for the black cause, he joined the ANC under apartheid, which was rare for a white person. Now a member of the South African supreme court, he publicly announced that he is HIV positive. I interviewed him several times in Johannesburg, where Cameron delivered his judgement, weighing his words carefully, on Wilfrid Napier.
‘Those who tried to play down the tragedy of AIDS in Africa, or to protect LGBTI people on this continent, found themselves facing an implacable opponent in the form of Cardinal Wilfrid Napier. Listening to him, one hesitates between distress and despair. He used his considerable power as a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church to oppose the rights of women, to condemn the use of condoms and to reject all legal protection for homosexuals. He militated against the decriminalization of sexual relations between consenting adult men or women and, of course, against same-sex couples. In spite of this obsession, he claimed not to know any homosexuals. So he made us invisible and judged us at the same time! This sorry saga in the history of our country, and this black page for the Catholic Church in Africa, is about to come to an end, we hope, with the pontificate of Francis.’
Let us add that Cardinal Wilfrid Napier did little to counter sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, which involves dozens of priests in South Africa. The Archbishop of Durban even declared, in an interview with the BBC, that paedophiles must not be ‘punished’ because they are ‘sick and not criminal’. In response to the scandal provoked by his words, the cardinal apologized, claiming he had been misunderstood. ‘I can’t be accused of homophobia,’ he backtracked, ‘because I don’t know any homosexuals.’
Robert Sarah is a homophobe of a different kind. I talked to him informally after a lecture, but I haven’t been able to interview him officially, in spite of several requests. On the other hand, I was able to talk several times to his collaborators, notably Nicolas Diat, the co-author of his books. Cardinal Fernando Filoni, who is in charge of African issues in the Vatican, and a priest who lived with Sarah when Sarah was secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, also spoke to me.
Robert Sarah was not born Catholic; he converted. Having grown up in a Coniagui tribe, 15 hours by bush taxi from the capital of Guinea, Conakry, he shares their prejudices, their rites and a liking for witchcraft and witch doctors. His family is animist, his house is made of beaten earth and he sleeps on the ground. The legend of Sarah, the head of the tribe, is born.
The idea of converting to Catholicism and then becoming a priest came from his contact with Missionaries of the Holy Spirit. He entered the minor seminary in the Ivory Coast, before being ordained as a priest in Conakry in 1969, at a time when the dictator in power of Guinea, Sékou Touré, was organizing a hunt of Catholics. When the city’s archbishop was imprisoned in 1979, Rome appointed Sarah in his place, making him the youngest bishop in the world. A stand-off began and the prelate stood up to the new dictator, which put him on the list of people … to be poisoned.
Most of the witnesses I have questioned testify to the courage Sarah showed under the dictatorship, and his understanding of power relations. Demonstrating a modesty that conceals an extravagant ego, the prelate was able to get himself spotted by members of John Paul II’s reactionary and homophilic entourage, who admired both his opposition to a pro-communist dictatorship and his rigid positions on sexual morality, the celibacy of the priesthood, homosexuality and condoms.
In 2001 John Paul II summoned Sarah, who left Africa and became ‘Roman’. It was a turning point. He became secretary to the important Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, the ministry at the Vatican that dealt with Africa.
‘I knew Robert Sarah when he arrived in Rome. He was a Bible scholar. He was humble and prudent, but also sycophantic and flattering with the cardinal prefect at the time, Crescenzio Sepe. He worked very hard,’ I am told by a priest, an African specialist, who was close to Sarah at the ‘Palazzo di propaganda’.
Several observers were also surprised by the unlikely team formed by Crescenzio Sepe and Robert Sarah, an odd pair. Without batting an eyelid, the young bishop served a cardinal, known as the ‘red pope’, who enjoyed a colourful life and who would be dispatched far from Rome by Pope Benedict XVI.
‘Sarah is a great mystic. He prays constantly, as if he’s under some sort of spell. He’s frightening. He’s literally frightening,’ a priest notes.
There are many grey areas in Robert Sarah’s career, which is a bit too brilliant to be true. For example, his connection with the far-right ideas of Mgr Lefebvre, excommunicated by the pope in 1988, comes up time and again: Sarah set up a missionary school of which Lefebvre was the titular head, and he then immersed himself, in France, in a fundamentalist milieu. Is Sarah’s closeness to the Catholic far right a simple venial sin of youth, or did it lastingly shape his ideas?
Another grey area concerns the liturgical and theological abilities of the cardinal, who serves mass in Latin ad orientem but is said not to have the requisite level of linguistic understanding. Ultra-elitist (because speaking Latin, even badly, means cutting oneself off from the ordinary people) and philistine. His writings on St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas have come under criticism. As for his rants against the Enlightenment philosophers, they reveal ‘an archaism which places superstition over reason,’ according to one theologian. Who adds: ‘Why go back to before Vatican II when you could go all the way to the Middle Ages!’
Another French academic and theologian who lives in Rome, and who has published many important books about Catholicism, tells me, over the course of three interviews: ‘Sarah is a bottom-of-the-range theologian. His theology is very puerile: “I pray, therefore I am.” He abuses arguments of authority. No theologian worthy of the name could take him very seriously.’
The French journalist Nicolas Diat, close to the reactionary right, who has written several books with Sarah, comes to the cardinal’s defence during the three lunches we have together in Paris.
‘Cardinal Sarah isn’t a “traditionalist” as people try to claim. He’s a conservative. At first he was a tribal chief, we mustn’t forget that. For me he’s a saint with immense piety.’
A saint that some people criticize for his interpersonal skills, his way of life and his African connections. An unconditional defender of the continent, in his public statements Sarah has remained discreet about the conduct of certain African prelates, such as those in the episcopal conference in Mali, or the huge sums that the Cardinal Archbishop of Bamako secretly placed in Switzerland (and which were revealed by the SwissLeaks scandal).
To this we should add a strange publishing mystery that I’ve discovered. The bookshop sales of books written by Cardinal Sarah barely correspond to the figures quoted. Certainly, it isn’t rare for an author to ‘inflate’ his sales figures out of vanity. But in the circumstances, the ‘250,000 copies’ announced in the press are almost ten times higher than the real bookshop sales. The cardinal’s ‘unprecedented success’ is more than an exaggeration. Sales of Cardinal Sarah’s books are merely average in France: at the end of 2018, Dieu ou rien (God or Nothing) sold 9,926 copies in the original large-format edition, and La Force du silence (The Strength of Silence) sold 16,325, in spite of the curious preface by the retired Pope Benedict XVI (these figures are according to the French publishing database Edistat). Sales on Amazon are equally poor. And even if we add distribution among parishes and seminaries, which are not always taken into account in publishing statistics, and the paperback format versions (only 4,608 copies sold of La Force du silence), we are a long way from the
author’s ‘hundreds of thousands of copies’. Abroad, there is the same fragility, particularly since the number of translations is itself lower than some journalists may have claimed.
How can we explain this ‘hiatus’? By carrying out investigations within Sarah’s publishing house, I finally let the cat out of the bag. According to two people familiar with these delicate negotiations; tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of copies of his books are said to have been bought ‘in bulk’ by sponsors and foundations, then distributed for free, particularly in Africa. These ‘bulk sales’ are entirely legal. Artificially serving to ‘inflate’ sales figures, they please both publishers and authors: they give the former significant profits, because they cut out distributors and bookshops; authors benefit even more because they are paid a percentage (in some cases, riders can be added to publishing contacts to renegotiate rights, if those parallel sales had not been initially envisaged). The English versions of Sarah’s books are published, perhaps in similar ways, by a conservative Catholic publishing house, which falls in line with his anti-gay-marriage campaigns: Ignatius Press in San Francisco.
Diplomatic sources also confirm that copies of Sarah’s books have been distributed for free in Africa; in Benin, for example. I myself have seen, in a French diplomatic cultural centre, piles of hundreds of books by the cardinal, under plastic.
In the Closet of the Vatican Page 40