Unmet Needs

At 17, Onesmus Kano started having sex with his high school girlfriend. The Catholic teenager ignored church warnings about premarital sex because he thought the priest “was an old man who wasn’t married and couldn’t understand what it was like to be a teenager.”

But he followed the church’s policy against condoms. Using them, he said, would have made him feel even more guilty. Like many young Catholics here, he viewed premarital sex with condoms as a “double sin.”

That was before Kano learned he was HIV-positive. Thanks to medical treatment, he is healthy. But he lost two sisters to AIDS and suspects that his parents, who died of a combination of illnesses in the 1990s, were also HIV-positive. He had 100 other friends and relatives who succumbed to the disease.

To many young people in this AIDS-devastated town, condoms are no longer a matter of morality or theological doctrine. They are a question of survival.

With 150 million church members, Africa has the world’s fastest-growing Roman Catholic population. Many of the faithful are young people who have seen the AIDS pandemic firsthand. Kano and others think new pontiff Benedict XVI needs to reexamine the Vatican’s doctrine if he wants to keep parishioners alive and in the church.

“I’d like to ask the new pope to see the reality of the importance of using a condom,” said Kano, who works as a youth counselor in Kisumu, an agricultural city on the banks of Lake Victoria.

Kisumu has the second-highest AIDS rate in Kenya. A 1999 United Nations survey estimated that 38% of Kisumu residents ages 15 to 24 were HIV-positive, with infection rates for young women twice as high as those for young men.

At the blue-roofed Fish Youth Center, Kisumu’s Catholic youth organization, a picture of Pope John Paul II still hangs above a chalkboard. John Paul preached against condom use and premarital sex, but he was loved by the center’s Catholics, who speak of his three visits to Kenya, including one in which he kissed the soil.

“He was the best pope,” said David Odhiambo, 26. “He had Africa at heart.”

Members wonder whether the 78-year-old Benedict will understand the needs of young Africans. They’ve heard little about the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. He’s old, they say, and German. They say he looks kind in the newspaper pictures they’ve seen.

“If he lived in Germany during World War II, then he probably understands human suffering like we do,” Kano said.

Edith Ojuany, 18, said she would have been more inspired by a younger pope.

Peter Kennedy Mudula, 24, said many of his friends are leaving the Catholic Church to join more dynamic evangelical ministries or African sects, which often incorporate drums, dancing and singing into services.

“Our friends are going to other churches that are more fun and lively and are not as strict as the Catholic Church,” Mudula said.

The Fish group members, like many African young people, represent a hard-to-classify mix of liberal and conservative viewpoints. Most embrace moves to give women more power, while many, following traditional church teachings, condemn homosexuality. Some say condoms save lives, while others say they promote immorality. They take comfort in the ancient traditions of the Catholic Church but also seek reform.

The Fish group has a history of independence and activism. Founded in 1985 by a priest and a nun at Kisumu’s St. Teresa Church, the organization launched youth-to-youth support groups on the theory that younger people didn’t respond well to lectures and sermons by adults.

By the 1990s, Fish’s members had turned their attention to the growing AIDS crisis, advocating HIV education and prevention -- including the use of condoms -- against the teachings of the church. Rather than preaching against premarital sex, Fish leaders said they wanted young people to make informed choices for themselves. One of the group’s founders, Martin Opondo, criticized the church at the time for “preaching from the pulpit about sexual morality and then burying the dead.”

But programs and comments quickly put Fish Youth Center at odds with local church leaders, some of whom tried to shut it down. Fish survived and now claims 1,000 members at 20 churches in the Kisumu area. Last month, the group celebrated its 20th anniversary.

But the group succumbed to pressure from church leaders to stop its campaign. In 2003, Fish shifted away from AIDS prevention and focused instead on less controversial activities, such as caring for AIDS victims, particularly orphans. It currently provides care to 84 people.

The Fish group’s theatrical troupe, which performs in marketplaces and schools, focuses on a message of abstinence. “If you touch condoms, the controversy comes to you,” said Opondo, who serves as the group’s chairman. “You can’t talk about prevention without talking about condoms. So the safest way out of it was to shift away from AIDS awareness. We’ve lost our activism.”

Since then, the Fish group and local church leaders appear to have reached an accommodation.

“If we kept going as strong as we were before, we might not still exist,” Opondo said. “We can’t go against our bishop and risk losing the ties to the church. That’s what holds us together.”

Church leaders acknowledge the group’s value in reaching out to youths. Twenty-seven former Fish members have become priests or nuns, Fish members say.

“If the group didn’t appeal to the youth, it would have died out a long time ago,” said Father John Oballa, vicar at St. Teresa’s.

But changing the church’s stance on condoms isn’t simple, Oballa said.

“The church is protecting a value,” he said. “What happens if an AIDS vaccine is developed tomorrow and we’ve just relaxed a moral principle? What does it say about all the other teachings?”

Opondo recently founded a new group, Youth Empowered to Succeed, or YES, which is not affiliated with the Catholic Church and therefore is free to talk about condoms and sex.

Kano works as a counselor for the new group but says he still feels conflicted when talking to young people.

“As a Catholic, it’s a bit of a challenge when I’m talking about condoms,” he said. “Inside, I feel like I’m going against the church.”

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Kenya’s challenges

The East African nation has a fast-growing, young population. Catholic teaching against condom use is being challenged because of an AIDS epidemic.

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Religions:

Protestant: 45%

Catholic: 33%

Muslim: 10%

Indigenous beliefs: 10%

Other: 2%

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*--* Kenya U.S. Population by age 0-14 41% 21% 15-64 57% 67% 65 and older 3% 12% Population below poverty line 50% 12% Median age 8.6 36 HIV/AIDS* Adult prevalence rate 6.7% 0.6% People living with HIV/AIDS (in millions) 12 0.95 HIV/AIDS deaths 150,000 14,000 *--*

Sources: CIA World Factbook, ‘Global Catholicism’ Graphics reporting by Julie Sheer

All figures 2004, unless noted; *2003 estimates; due to rounding, numbers may not total 100%