Vatican condom row: pope prevails as Knights of Malta chief resigns

The head of the Knights of Malta, an ancient Catholic order, has resigned over a dispute with the Vatican about free condoms that has become a battle of wills between the heads of two of the world’s oldest institutions and a test of Pope Francis’s authority.

The Rome-based chivalric and charity institution said Grand Master Matthew Festing, 67, resigned after the pope asked him to step down on Tuesday. Grand masters of the institution, which was founded in the 11th century, usually hold their posts for life.

“The pope asked him to resign and he agreed,” the order’s spokesperson said, adding that the group’s sovereign council would sign off on the highly unusual resignation within days.

Festing and the Vatican have been locked in a bitter dispute since one of the order’s top officials, Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager, was sacked in December after the charity distributed condoms as part of a medical project for the poor.

Von Boeselager and his supporters said the condom issue was an excuse by Festing and the papal envoy to the order, Cardinal Raymond Burke – an American arch-conservative who has accused the pope of being too liberal – to increase their power.

Burke has been outspoken in his criticism of Francis’s efforts to reform Catholic teaching on questions related to the family, marriage and divorce. He was one of four cardinals who signed an open letter to Francis last year questioning new guidance allowing priests to decide on a case-by-case basis whether divorced and remarried believers should be able to receive communion.

After Von Boeselager was sacked by Festing, he appealed to the pope, who appointed a five-member commission to look into the unusual circumstances of the dismissal.

Festing, a Briton who has been grand master for nine years, refused to cooperate, saying the papal commission was an illegitimate intervention in the order’s sovereign affairs. He defiantly set up his own internal commission.

The Vatican, in turn, rejected what it said was an attempt to discredit members of the commission and ordered the leaders of the institution to cooperate with the inquiry. The papal commission was due to deliver its findings to the pope at the end of January.

“Behind this dispute is an internal struggle within the Knights between reformers who want the order to focus on humanitarian work and a traditionalist clique out of step with Francis,” said Austen Ivereigh, the pope’s biographer.

“Historically, the Knights have mixed ecclesiastical policy and high finance in a way which is repugnant to Francis. He is naturally inclined to support the reformers, and seized the opportunity to encourage them.”

The all-male top leaders of the Knights of Malta are not clerics but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the pope. The institution has 13,500 members, 25,000 employees and 80,000 volunteers worldwide.

The order – formed in the 11th century to provide protection and medical care for pilgrims to the Holy Land – has the trappings of a sovereign entity. It maintains diplomatic relations with more than 100 states and the EU, and permanent observer status at the United Nations.

When Festing fired Von Boeselager he accused the German of hiding the fact that he allowed the use of condoms when he ran Malteser International, the order’s humanitarian aid agency.

The church does not allow the use of condoms as a means of birth control and says abstinence and monogamy in heterosexual marriage is the best way to stop the spread of Aids.

Von Boeselager said he closed two projects in the developing world when he discovered condoms were being distributed but kept a third running for a while because closing it would have abruptly ended all basic medical services to poor people.

The order’s leadership said the scandal was serious and it was “disgraceful” that Boeselager had refused to obey Festing by resigning.

Francis has said he wants the 1.2 billion-member church to avoid so-called culture wars over moral teachings and show mercy to those who cannot live by all its rules, especially the poor.

Vatican condom row: pope prevails as Knights of Malta chief resigns

Why a porn star is fighting California"s condom law: "It"s a women"s rights issue"

What does a porn star wear when she hits the campaign trail?

A smile.

And a black net brassiere with intricate straps. A very short, peach satin romper open to the waist. A whole lot of deeply tanned skin. And a fist full of “No on Proposition 60” pamphlets.

Not familiar with Proposition 60? Neither were most of the students Tasha Reign (her nom de scène) encountered on a sunny Monday at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).

The measure, one of 17 on the California ballot in November, would require adult entertainers to wear condoms while filming sex scenes. To the 27-year-old feminist with a fan base she calls her Reigndeers, Proposition 60 is an assault on her human rights, her artistic freedom and the very constitution itself.

Not to mention that it is often anatomically impractical.

“I do acts where I literally could not use condoms, whether that be anal, whether that be double penetration, whether that be multiple guys,” Reign told the Guardian. “I cannot even imagine having a group sex scene like that.”

I hate the idea that some man is going to tell me what I can and can’t do

Tasha Reign

The logistical hurdles are endless. How do you ensure that the same condom doesn’t find itself inside more than one woman? Do you stop filming while an actor swaps latex? What if the condom breaks during a particularly rigorous outing? This isn’t, she notes, regular sex, 20 or so comfy minutes and it’s over.

“It’s extremely difficult for somebody to be able to maintain an erection for 45 minutes, and to be able to pop with a condom, especially,” she said. “The bigger issue for me is that it opens up the gateway to mandate my body. I hate the idea that some man is going to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

Reign is a practitioner of gonzo porn – none of the cuddly couples stuff for her. Her Twitter feed is filled with political activism and waxed genitalia. As she campaigns in front of UCSD’s Geisel Library, she attracts attention, if not always votes.

Ten minutes before every hour, as one class ends and another is set to begin, the tree-lined walkway fills with students. Young women weighed down with heavy backpacks slide their eyes Reign’s way before hurrying off. A young man on a skate board does a double take fast enough to cause whiplash.

Tasha Reign talks to UC San Diego students about Proposition 60, which would require adult entertainers to wear condoms during sex scenes. Photograph: Ariana Drehsler for the Guardian

She walks up to student after student, leading with a smile, campaign literature in her outstretched hand. More often than not on this day, her targets scurry by. The young men at the fraternity table across the path rebuff her.

“It’s like a lot of rejection,” Reign says with a pout. “When they say no, I’m not used to it, actually.”

But she is not deterred. “Are you going to vote on Prop 60?” she begins, over and over. “Let me tell you about it. I’m an adult film star.”

The day after her UCSD foray, she arrives at California State University, Long Beach. In her first hour, she gives her pitch 18 times – 19 if you count the guy who said he wasn’t voting but hung around to talk to her anyway – and posed for a selfie with a young man in full Dodgers regalia.

I want to be able to say: I’m a sex worker. I have a choice in the way that I protect my genitals

Tasha Reign

“This would take away the choice we have to use condoms or not,” Reign tells them. The measure, she says, “incentivizes people to sue adult film stars, giving them access to their personal names, their personal home address, taking your tax dollars and putting it toward regulating an industry that does a really good job at self-regulating itself.”

“It’s a women’s rights issue,” she says. And “it’s also a freedom of speech issue.” And “it’s something the performers, the majority of us, don’t want passed.” And “we just want you guys to vote no.” And “tell your friends.”

Michael Weinstein, president of the Aids Healthcare Foundation, is the measure’s major backer. Neither he nor his organization responded to repeated requests for comment.

The Vote Yes on Prop 60 website says “condoms in porn is about protecting California employees at work.” Although Reign and other adult film actors undergo regular screening for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, such testing is voluntary.

The state’s Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties have officially come out against the measure, along with Aids Project LA, Equality California, the Transgender Law Center and the San Francisco Aids Foundation.

Most major newspapers in the state recommend a no vote. The Los Angeles Times’ editorial against the measure points out that “any resident who spots a violation in a pornographic film shot in the state could sue and collect cash from the producers and purveyors if they prevail in court.”

Reign is a registered Democrat who supports Hillary Clinton for president. She had planned to vote for Bernie Sanders in the primary, but her mother persuaded her otherwise. She lives in the hills above Los Angeles with her Chihuahua mixes, Cinderella and Bambi, and her pot-bellied piglets, Harley and Quinn.

She graduated from UCLA with a degree in women’s studies. And she did not get into adult entertainment, she said, so she could be pushed around by a man like Weinstein “who has never been a sex worker” and doesn’t respect the choices she and her fellow performers make.

She doesn’t believe that such a person “should come in and tell me, on my own adult film set that I’m producing in my own home that I need to use a condom”.

“I want to be able to say: I’m a sex worker. I have a choice in the way that I protect my genitals. This is a huge issue for me.”

Why a porn star is fighting California"s condom law: "It"s a women"s rights issue"

Cuba"s condom shortage raises fears of imminent overall health crisis

From potatoes to deodorant, toilet paper and bottled beer, Cubans have come to accept continual shortages as an inevitable part of existence following more than half a century of communist rule.

Now a shrinking supply of condoms has upset residents of the Caribbean island nation and alarmed overall health officials who are concerned by the chance of an enhance in sexually transmitted illnesses and unwanted pregnancies.

Pharmacies in the central province of Villa Clara began operating out of condoms in the middle of final month, according to Cuban bloggers reporting on the crisis, with shortages spreading to other towns and villages, and suburbs of the capital Havana in recent weeks.

One of the worst impacted places, the observers say, is the city of Santa Clara, which presently has one of the highest costs of HIV infection on the island. They say that Cenesex, the state-run Cuban nationwide centre for intercourse schooling, which is headed by President Raul Castro’s daughter, Mariela, has ordered the dwindling supplies to be allocated to regions of greatest require, like acknowledged carriers of HIV.

As a end result, standard citizens going to pharmacies in search of condoms are obtaining empty shelves, according to evidence collected by Havana blogger Polina Martínez Shvietsova, who carried out an ad-hoc survey.

She stated referred to as a amount of pharmacy owners in many locations, who all advised her: “We really don’t have any, and we really do not know when we’ll get some.”

Other analysts warned of the overall health risk. “The men and women in the street, [those] generating enjoy in homes of lease, godforsaken corridors, in parks, these are sources of possible chains of infection,” explained one particular anonymous man quoted by Cubanet, a Miami-based independent network of bloggers and dissidents.

So far there has been no official reaction from the Cuban government to the reviews. One particular regional official blamed troubles with supplies from China in an interview with the Villa Clara newspaper Vanguardia this month but supplied no answer about when the scenario would ease.

But Juan Carlos Gonzalez, director of the state-run wholesaler Ensume, which is responsible for obtaining and supplying most of the nation’s government-subsidised condoms, told the newspaper there were far more than a million condoms in the company’s warehouses and that the difficulty was the end result of his workers currently being unable to meet demand.

He explained Ensume had struggled to preserve up with a ruling by the state’s regulatory health care agency Cecmed two many years ago that the 2012 expiration date on hundreds of thousands of condoms imported from China was incorrect and that the packages had to be relabelled 2014.

Gonzalez said the employees could only repackage 1,440 strips of three condoms per day whilst the demand in Villa Clara province alone was five,000 day-to-day. Consequently, the cost of a single condom has risen from just pennies to about $ one.30, a day’s wages for a common Cuban worker.

Till now, condom supplies have not been a difficulty in Cuba, which has often had an aggressive sexual wellness programme and has been praised by the Planet Overall health Organization as having a single of the lowest costs of HIV/AIDS in the western hemisphere.

But the WHO did note in a 2005 report that HIV infections had been increasing since of an boost in prostitution and intercourse tourism on the island.

The condom shortage, meanwhile, has also impacted people who use the prophylactics for non-sexual purposes. Anglers use them to give floats a glossy sheen eye-catching to fish, pigeon fanciers use their rubber rims to attach notes to birds’ legs and challenging-up thrill-seekers fill them with low cost rum to smuggle into nightclubs.

“Police in central Havana are pretty much on a war footing taking care of the brawls produced within the large crowds that aspire to buy the longed-for tuber,” wrote Cuban author Miriam Celaya in a tongue-in-cheek blog entry quoted by the Miami Herald.

Cuba"s condom shortage raises fears of imminent overall health crisis