The Vatican is calling on governments to bring in laws that will make it possible to prosecute men who pay for sex.
The call came in a new document dealing with a range of problems connected to roads and travel. As well as prostitution, it also discussed street children, tramps and unruly motorists.
Presenting the document in the Vatican on Tuesday, prelates held up Swedish laws in the area of prostitution as a model for the rest of the world.
Under a law passed in 1999, loitering or soliciting clients is not a crime in Sweden, but paying for sex on or off the street is. Since the law was introduced, the number of women involved in street prostitution has declined.
Monsignor Agostino Marchetto, secretary of the Vatican body which produced the new document, said the Catholic Church would like to see this approach adopted everywhere.
"Our model is the Swedish legislation," he said.
"The time has come to condemn the types of sexual violence which have women as its object and to pass laws which effectively defend them from such violence," the document said.
The Vatican document denounced prostitution as "a form of slavery, an offence to human dignity and a grave violation of fundamental rights".
It called for a "cultural change regarding the sex trade", adding that this required not only laws targeting clients and their managers, but also general "social condemnation".
Despite condemning the act of paying for sex, the Vatican also said that a prostitute's client is, in a way, also a "slave" who should be "helped to resolve his intimate problems"
How to deal with prostitution remains the subject of debate in many countries. In Italy, Interior Minister Giuliano Amato has also expressed his approval of the Swedish approach.
At the moment only the exploitation of prostitution - pimping - is illegal in Italy.
The Swedes say a key element of their success has been funding schemes to give women alternative work possibilities.
The new Vatican document - Guidelines for the Pastoral Care of the Road - also had sections on street children, tramps and motorists.
In the section motorists, it said these road users were often guilty of the most un-Christian behaviour. Thanks to unruly and careless drivers, the world's streets had become a theatre of "arrogance, violence, egoism, murder and blasphemy".
