A top Vatican official told the BBC Oct. 12 that condoms do not prevent HIV transmission.

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told BBC1’s “Panorama” program that all condoms contain tiny holes that HIV can pass through.

“The AIDS virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon,” Lopez said. “The spermatozoon can easily pass through the net that is formed by the condom.... These margins of uncertainty should represent an obligation on the part of the health ministries and all these campaigns to act in the same way as they do with regard to cigarettes, which they state to be a danger.”

The World Health Organization and AIDS educators said the Vatican is confused. “These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million,” WHO said.

Condoms can break or slip off, the organization said, but they do not contain small holes that HIV can slip through.

The Catholic Church teaches that it is a deadly sin to engage in any sexual act that cannot lead to pregnancy, such as oral sex, masturbation, gay sex, and sex with condoms.

The Russian Orthodox chapel in which the nation’s first same-sex wedding was conducted has been demolished after local church leaders determined it had been desecrated.

The Chapel of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, in Nizhniy Novgorod, was torn down after Father Vladimir Enert accepted $450 to marry Denis Gogolev, 27, and Mikhail Morozov, 23, on Sept. 1. Enert was defrocked over the incident.

Nizhniy Novgorod, previously named Gor’kiy, is 248 miles (400 km) east of Moscow. It is Russia’s third-largest city.

A new study by the New South Wales state attorney general finds that 85 percent of Sydney homosexuals have experienced homophobic abuse, harassment or violence, and half of them have experienced it in the past year.

Verbal abuse was the most common problem, followed by offensive gestures, threat of assault and assault. Gay teens reported feeling most vulnerable.

The report, Homophobic Hostilities and Violence Against Gay Men and Lesbians in NSW, questioned 600 gays and lesbians in Australia’s largest city.

Swedish gay couples are being recognized as the parents of their children following a recent change in the law.

A lesbian couple in Umeå are now the legal parents of a girl who was born to one of the women, and two men in Stockholm are now the legal parents of a girl they previously adopted in the U.S.

A survey has found that 52 percent of people who belong to the Church of England think sexually active gays should be allowed to be priests. And 69 percent approve of gay priests if they’re celibate.

The ICM Research survey for The Telegraph daily newspaper questioned 500 church members.

Earlier this year, the bishop of Oxford appointed a gay priest who lives celibately with his lover as bishop of Reading, England. But Jeffrey John was later forced to decline the job by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, following a prolonged outcry from church conservatives.

Under pressure from the European Union, which it is set to join, Malta banned anti-gay discrimination in the workplace Oct. 7.

A legal notice published in the Government Gazette stated: “In determining whether any treatment is treatment that is justified in a democratic society, the Industrial Tribunal shall take into account the provisions of any directive and/or regulation issued by the institutions of the European Union relating to discrimination and particularly Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29th June 2000 and Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27th November 2000 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion or belief, disability, age, sexual orientation, race or ethnic origin.”

Gay activists welcomed the move but said they will be happier when the changes are written directly into labor law rather than merely published as subsidiary legislation.

Forty percent of Maltese gays and lesbians report workplace harassment based on their sexual orientation, according to the Malta Gay Rights Movement.

Twenty percent of gays and lesbians in Wales are afraid to come out at work, a survey by Stonewall Cymru and Cardiff University has found. And 25 percent say they’ve been fired for being gay.

A third of those questioned said they’d been bullied or physically attacked for being gay, and a quarter reported harassment or discrimination at the hands of police.

The survey was completed by 364 people.

A national alliance of GLBT organizations has formed in India, The Times of India reported Oct. 18.

The India Network for Sexual Minorities is the nation’s first such association. It has 15 members, said Ashok Row Kavi, India’s best-known gay activist.

The invitation-only network seeks to overturn the ban on gay sex, eliminate police harassment of sexual minorities and improve gay people’s medical care.

Hijras also are represented in the alliance, via the Dai Welfare Society. They are transgender and intersex people — mostly castrated males — who, while social outcasts, fulfill the societal role of blessing newborns and dancing at weddings.