VATICAN CITY - The Vatican on Friday denounced the criticisms of the pope's comments about condoms and AIDS during his trip to Africa, saying they marked an unprecedented attempt to intimidate him into silence.
Pope Benedict XVI said last month that condoms weren't the answer to Africa's AIDS epidemic and could make the problem worse.
France, Germany, the UN AIDS-fighting agency as well as the British medical journal The Lancet criticized the comments as irresponsible and dangerous. The Belgian parliament passed a resolution calling them "unacceptable" and demanding that the government officially protest.
Belgium's ambassador to the Holy See lodged the formal protest April 15, prompting the strongly worded Vatican statement Friday.
Criticizing the Belgian vote, the Vatican said it deplored "the fact that a parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context."
It said the remarks had been "used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the Pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the Church's doctrine."
It wasn't immediately clear which groups the Vatican was referring to. The Belgian resolution, which passed April 2, said Benedict's comments ran against numerous international declarations and actions taken by the United Nations and others who have been fighting AIDS and other transmittable diseases such as malaria.
It said they were "unacceptable" and that the Belgian government didn't share them.
A similar resolution is under consideration by the Belgian Senate.
In its statement, the Vatican decried what it said was an "unprecedented media campaign" in Europe that was unleashed by the pope's remarks about condoms, while ignoring Benedict's fuller message about the need to care for those suffering from AIDS.
The Vatican said it was consoled that Africans and "the true friends of Africa" had praised and appreciated the pontiff's remarks.
The 82-year-old pope, who marks his fourth anniversary as pontiff on Sunday, has faced enormous criticism recently. In addition to the uproar over his condom comments, his decision to remove the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust sparked outcry, even within his own church.
