Estimated worldwide HIV infections: 55 567 767 at noon on Thursday January 15 2004.
The Grand Seminaire de Montreal, a Catholic seminary, will this year begin requiring all men who apply to study to become priests to take an HIV test, the Montreal Gazette reports.
The Reverend Marcel Demers said that a positive HIV test will ‘sound an alarm bell” that an applicant could be a man who has sex with men, according to the Gazette.
HIV-positive applicants will be asked how they were infected, and if they say that they were infected by having sex with a man, the seminary ‘will try to see what really is the person’s calling”, Demers said.
He added that they would not be ‘automatically refused” admittance to the seminary, according to the Gazette. ‘It’s not that Jesus wanted homophobia,” Demers said, adding, ‘But we also realise that this profile doesn’t lend itself as well to what we require of a priest.” Demers added that the church believes men who have sex with men ‘have a harder time” remaining celibate than men who do not.
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