"Contraception Attractive" - Catholic Archbishop Vincent Nichols

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UK Catholic leader Archbishop Vincent Nichols has said that he understands why birth control methods such as the pill and condoms appear attractive in helping tackle world poverty.

Speaking to the BBC the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster explained how he understood that putting women in poor countries more in charge of their own fertility was an attractive idea but that it was not the Church's role to add to calls for condom distribution.

The Catholic Church is against contraception and this has been reaffirmed by successive popes including the present Pope.

The Archbishop said on Third World Poverty: "I can see the arguments, why, in the short term, means that give women protection are attractive."

This is the closest that a western Catholic leader as high as Archbishop Nichols has ever come to condoning the use of contraception. There have been some Catholic theologians that have expressed the view that using condoms to stop the spread of HIV would be a "good thing" but Archbishop Nichols in addressing the argument for condom use as a means to tackle world poverty steps up the argument a little higher in that this encompasses social and economical factors rather than just health.

The Archbishop, was despite his talk of the attractiveness of contraception as a way to tackle poverty, steadfast in supporting the Catholic Church's stance against contraception. The Church believes that all contraception is sinful and that all children should be welcomed as a gift from god. Some aid agencies feel that lowering the birth rate in poor countries will help tackle poverty. Archbishop Nichols gave the view that if we tackle poverty itself then poor people would become more empowered and birth rates would come down naturally.