Clashes broke out outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris as anti-Aids activists staged protests over Pope Benedict XVI’s claims on comments on condom use.
Eleven people were arrested after skirmishes pitted two dozen far-right militants against a group of green and communist activists handing out condoms outside the cathedral after Sunday mass, police said.
One person was remanded in custody for assaulting a police officer.
Separately, a group of Catholic youths faced off with two dozen anti-Aids activists who staged a sit-in protest accusing the pope of ”complicity with Aids” for his claim that condoms aggravate the pandemic.
Held back by a police cordon, the Catholics chanted in Latin and hurled eggs and water at the activists, an Agence-France Presse correspondent reported.
The protests wound down in the early afternoon.
Benedict sparked global condemnation with the comments made last week as he began his first visit to Africa as pontiff.
Benedict said on the plane taking him to Cameroon that HIV/Aids ”cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems”.
An IFOP poll released on Sunday showed that 43% of French Catholics want the pope to step down and that most want the Church to change its stance on abortion, divorce and homosexuality.
Clouds of evil
Benedict, addressing the biggest crowd of his trip, on Sunday challenged Africans to cast aside the ”clouds of evil” of wars, corruption and tribal strife and forge a new path to peace and prosperity.
On his last full day in Africa he said a Mass for a crowd estimated by police and organisers at about one million people. At its start, he prayed for two women killed in a stadium stampede at one of his events.
”I express my solidarity to their families and friends and my deep pain because this happened while they were coming to see me,” he told the crowd gathered on a sprawling dusty area near the city’s cement factory.
Two women in their early 20s were killed in a stampede to enter the stadium in central Luanda several hours before the pope presided at a youth rally on Saturday. The Vatican said it had been told that up to 40 people were injured.
In his last major message, read from a massive platform covered by a huge canopy to shelter him from the sun, the pope drove home a message he has been sounding for a week — that Africa had to shed its systemic ills.
He said the continent had too often seen ”the destructive power of civil strife, the descent into a maelstrom of hatred and revenge, the squandering of the efforts of generations of good people”.
Eradicte greed
”We think of the evil of war, the murderous fruits of tribalism and ethnic rivalry, the greed which corrupts men’s hearts, enslaves the poor, and robs future generations of the resources they need to create a more equitable and just society, a society truly and authentically African in its genius and values,” he said.
Before delivering his traditional Sunday noon blessing to the crowd, he called Africa ”this great continent so filled with hope, yet so thirsty for justice, for peace …”
He made a specific appeal for peace in neighbouring DRC.
”The pope spoke the truth about violence and corruption in Africa,” said a man who gave his first name as Aristotles. ”But even with this strong message to our leaders it will be very hard to change things.” – Reuters, AFP