The Vatican department dealing with health issues has completed a detailed study on the use of condoms, Cardinal Javier Lorenzo Barragan said on Tuesday.
The study, commissioned by Pope Benedict, has been passed on to the Vatican doctrinal watchdog and could eventually feed into a papal document on the subject, Barragan said at a news conference.
The Catholic Church is against condoms but recently several top prelates have suggested it might by ethically permissible for them to be used in limited circumstances to combat the spread of AIDS.
"This is a point that worries Benedict XVI very much," said Cardinal Barragan, who heads the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral.
"Following his wishes we carried out a careful study of the condom both from a scientific and moral point of view. We have handed our study - almost 200 pages - to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is examining it".
The prelate gave no details of what conclusions, if any, the study reached and stressed that it covered a wide range of opinions on the issue.
But he said: "I think that no response from the Church should encourage sexual promiscuity".
The Vatican has long been criticised for its continued opposition to the use of condoms, even in areas of the world such as Africa, where about 3 million people are infected with AIDS every year.
The official Catholic line remains the one voiced by Benedict XVI in June 2005, when he said sexual abstinence is the only real way of preventing AIDS spreading.
Last April, progressive Italian cardinal Carlo Maria Martini suggested that it might be acceptable for condoms to be used inside a marriage if one of the partners has AIDS.
