After a trip from Mexico, Pope Francis went back to Rome and announced on Feb. 18 that places affected by the Zika virus may receive such exemption from the Catholic church's rule on being against contraception.
The Pope's recent take on contraception is stirring up confusions and debates about the rules set first hand by the church. But the Pope is making an exemption due to this ongoing epidemic in order to protect the health of women and their unborn child. Despite this sudden change of view on the matter, he still made it clear that he is against abortion, but he just sees contraception as the lesser evil.
"Abortion is not the lesser of two evils. It is a crime," The Wall Street Journal quoted the Pope. "It is to kill someone in order to save another. This is what the Mafia does. It is a crime, an absolute evil."
Although the Pope has already explained his reason for allowing contraception, other Catholic leaders still disagree with his stand that local bishops in South America even said that this virus is not an excuse to use contraception or abortion.
This issue is stirring up a lot of questions to people, especially those who are devout in the religion and those who are calling out for the need of contraception to fight with AIDS and HIV. The church didn't approve the use of it when the AIDS virus started to become an epidemic and truth be told, there are even more people these days who are affected by it.
The Pope has no answer to those questions just yet, but based on the report lead by NPR's European correspondent from the Vatican, it is looking like the Pope is trying to send a message for local church leaders to learn to weigh in things and focus on what would be good for the people than continuing with a tradition that would clearly result to fatalities, poverty and other unfortunate events in a human being's life.
