AIDS Conference Hears Papal Appeal for Unity : Health: John Paul urges a ‘global fight’ against the killer disease and drug addiction. But divisive debate marks the three-day meeting.

VATICAN CITY — Medical researchers and moral theologians who walk different paths to confront a common enemy in AIDS joined Wednesday after three days of often divisive debate to hear a papal appeal for international cooperation in battling the disease and compassion for its victims.

More than 1,000 delegates from 85 countries heard Pope John Paul II urge governments and health workers to undertake a “global fight against AIDS and drug addiction.”

“Your care must never know any kind of discrimination,” the Pope said in a section of his speech addressed to doctors.

He told scientists they must galvanize efforts to answer the demands of “an imploring humanity that knocks on the door of your competence and sensitivity.” He told parents they should be the first bulwark against AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) by instilling in children moral principles that would lead them to choose “the right kind” of social and sexual behavior.

To AIDS victims, the Pope said: “The effort you make to give meaning to your suffering is a precious call to all of us to the highest values of life and perhaps a determining help for those tempted by despair. Do not close in on yourselves but accept the support of your brothers.”

In an address delivered in Italian, John Paul re-emphasized the church’s condemnation of the use of contraceptives to protect against a disease he said is often caused by “the phenomena of drug addiction and abuse of sexuality.”

“It is morally illicit to champion a prevention of the AIDS sickness based on recourse to means and remedies that violate the authentically human sense of sexuality,” he said. The best defense against AIDS, he said, is “a healthy, free and responsible life style.”

Pathos and conflict marked the three-day deliberation in a Vatican hall normally reserved for consultations between the Pope and his bishops. Medical researchers urged a multifaceted scientific assault on AIDS that clashed with the sex-only-in-marriage teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

Wednesday’s closing session underlined the diversity of the participants. Lt. Col. Robert Redfield, chief of AIDS research at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, said AIDS is well-established within the U.S. armed forces and could become a leading cause of death. More than 5,000 military personnel are currently infected, he said--one male soldier in 500, and one in every 1,000 female soldiers.

Rocco Buttiglione, an Italian philosophy professor who suggested that AIDS is “divine punishment” for homosexuality and drug addiction, drew quick rebuttal. “It is not the wrath of God. Let’s not look for scapegoats,” said Father Mario Picchi, an Italian priest who administers a drug rehabilitation program in Rome.

Most of the delegates were Catholic, but one West German doctor, August Wilhelm von Eiff, told delegates that he would advise the use of contraceptives for a married couple in which one partner is infected.

Edmund Pellegrino, director of a center for the study of medical ethics at Georgetown University in Washington, said most U.S. doctors routinely recommend the practice of safe sex as a defense against disease. The issue, though, is an ethical challenge for some Catholic doctors, he said, adding, “Some say the use of contraceptives minimizes harm, while others say sexual activity should not be encouraged.”

In addition to forbidding the use of condoms, the church calls for abstinence in the case of a married couple where one partner is infected.

Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York, the senior American churchman at the conference, echoed an anti-condom stand affirmed last week by American bishops meeting in Baltimore.

“The truth is not in condoms or clean needles. These are lies; lies perpetrated often for political reasons on the part of public officials . . . by some health care professionals who believe they have nothing else to offer persons with AIDS or at risk,” O’Connor said.

“Sometimes I believe that the greatest damage done to persons with AIDS is done by the dishonesty of those health-care professionals who refuse to confront the moral dimensions of sexual aberrations or drug abuse. Good morality is good medicine,” O’Connor said in a keynote address at the opening round of the conference.

An Irish priest suffering from AIDS, which he said he contracted as a missionary in Africa, was ejected from the opening session of the conference when he brandished a placard reading: “The Church Has AIDS.”

Peter Larkin, a 34-year-old English AIDS sufferer, said the conference was irrelevant to victims of the disease. “Why was the voice of people with AIDS not allowed?” he demanded of the conference chairman, Archbishop Fiorenzo Angelini, after being told he could not address the delegates.