Western media are claiming the Pope committed a colossal public-relations gaffe Tuesday while flying to Cameroon by rejecting condoms as a means of fighting AIDS.

Africans — who must deal with the tragic reality that the “rubberization” of their societies with condoms has failed dismally in preventing AIDS — don’t agree.

“Pope Benedict XVI’s claim yesterday that condoms actually aggravate the problem of AIDS may seem an explosive claim internationally, but it’s barely made a ripple here — in part, because it simply repeats an argument made so often by Africa’s Catholic bishops that it long ago lost any shock value,” John Allen reported yesterday from Yaoundè, Cameroon.

In fact, Allen’s article notes that the lack of faith in condoms as an effective means of combating AIDS is widely shared by Africans, not just the continent’s Catholic bishops.

“With condoms, people think they can do whatever they want,” Vanessa Balla, a medical doctor who treats AIDS patients, told Allen. “It just encourages them to engage in really risky sexual behaviors. I’ve seen it myself … they take as much risk as possible.”

Balla said that as a physician “it’s incredibly hard to watch young people dying of AIDS” and that the solution to the crisis is “not condoms, but changing behavior.”

Even some pro-condom Africans who spoke with Allen took issue with the belief fostered by Western organizations that condom distribution serves as a panacea against AIDS transmission.

“Julienne Christelle Bekono, also a student, said that Western donors and African governments both seem to think that if they shower a country with condoms, they’ve solved the problem of AIDS, she said,” Allen reported. “Instead, Bekono called for greater investments in finding a long-term cure — although she said that condoms should remain part of an across-the-board approach.”