Posted on 12/06/2005 10:33:19 AM PST by NYer
Brazilian singer Daniela Mercury, who was banned from performing in a Vatican Christmas concert, said on Monday she was outraged at a Vatican claim that she had threatened to promote condom use during the show.
"I am surprised and outraged with the declarations made by the Vatican's representative," Mercury, one of Brazil's biggest musical stars, said in a statement.
"I never stated that I would advocate the use of condoms at the Vatican's Christmas concert."
The dispute has shot back and forth across the Atlantic since Mercury first said her offer to take part in the show had been withdrawn. She said last month the Vatican had excluded her because she took part in a campaign promoting the use of condoms to fight AIDS.
Mercury, who is an ambassador for UNICEF and the U.N. anti-AIDS program, had been invited to sing as part of an international cast that also included South African singer Miriam Makeba.
The concert is a traditional fund-raiser for charities broadcast on Italian television on Christmas Eve. The Pope does not attend but dozens of cardinals and Vatican officials do.
On Friday, the Vatican defended its decision to exclude Mercury. It said the reason was not her convictions about contraceptives but because she had said she would openly promote the use of condoms to prevent AIDS.
"Their allegations are incongruent with the facts," Mercury said in her latest statement.
The church opposes the condoms because they are a form of contraception. It says promoting condoms to stop the spread of AIDS fosters what it sees as immoral and hedonistic lifestyles and behavior that will only contribute to its spread.
Amid all the fuss the government of Brazil, the world's largest Roman Catholic country, announced last week it planned to distribute 1 billion free condoms next year to fight AIDS.
Mercury is from Bahia in northeast Brazil and burst onto the scene in 1993 with the album "O Canto da Cidade" (Song of the City). Since then she has become one of the country's top entertainers with highly energetic shows and music that mixes "Axe" northeastern percussive music with techno styles.
She appeared at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland last July.
That is so true!
But eye candy is still eye candy. You know, appreciation of natural beauty and God's creation and all that.
"but man-hands and a Chelsea Clinton smile make me run in fear."
Man-hands, a Chelsea Clinton smile, and several cubic liters of silicone.
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