Pope Restates His Criticism of Contraception
Pope John Paul II, visiting one of Africa’s most populous countries, spoke out Thursday against contraception as a way of controlling population growth.
The pontiff said that moral responsibility was the sole Christian method of birth control.
“Mastery over fertility must remain a profoundly human thing, as the church requires, expressing the healthy agencies of morality,” he said.
The Pope spoke at an open-air Mass attended by about 75,000 people in Gitega, a former capital of Burundi, 60 miles east of the present captial, Bujumbura.
The 70-year-old pontiff is on his seventh African visit, which earlier this week took him to neighboring Tanzania, and takes him today to Rwanda and Sunday to the Ivory Coast in west Africa.
He has repeatedly stressed on this and past trips his belief that contraception in all its forms is wrong.
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