Pope John Paul said on Friday the Roman Catholic Church and its health care workers had to focus more on helping AIDS sufferers in the developing world.

“The Church must dedicate particular attention to those areas of the world where AIDS sufferers do not have health care,” he told members of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, a Vatican department on health care policy and ethics.

In his address, the 84-year-old Pope made no comment on condoms in the fight against AIDS, which the Church opposes in all except the rarest of circumstances because they are a form of contraception.

But he did say that Catholic health care workers should “spread, explain and defend the teaching of the Church in the health care area” and favour its inclusion in health care practices where they work.

The Roman Catholic Church teaches that fidelity within heterosexual marriage, chastity and abstinence are the best ways to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.

It says promoting the use of condoms to fight the spread of AIDS fosters what it sees as immoral and hedonistic lifestyles and behaviour that will only contribute to its spread.

The condoms debate made the front pages of newspapers around the world this week after Father Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, secretary-general of the Spanish Bishops Conference, said they could have “a place in the global approach to tackling AIDS”.

The next day, the conference effectively retracted his statement, saying there had not been any change in the Church’s position on the use of condoms.

A total of 3.1 million people died from AIDS in 2004. Sub-Saharan Africa, with just over 10 percent of the world’s population, is home to more than 60 percent of all HIV positive people, or about 25.4 million people.

The United Nations says the number of people living with HIV has increased from 35 million in 2001 to 39.4 million in 2004.

The Pope praised the work of a new Vatican foundation called Good Samaritan, founded last year to coordinate funds from charities and organisations helping AIDS victims, particularly in Africa.

He donated 100,000 euros ($133,900) of his private funds earmarked for charities to help start up the foundation.