A film director has broken a national taboo by making a series of Aids-awareness advertisements using the word “condom” on screen.

Filming began yesterday at Rome airport of a government-backed television commercial aimed at helping Italians – especially the young - to overcome their embarrassment in asking for contraceptives. Previous campaigns have avoided explicit mention of condoms in the Catholic nation, which records 4,000 new HIV cases each year.

Last month Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholic pharmacists to avoid dispensing contraceptives and pregnancy terminating drugs, saying that “conscientious objection” by chemists “must be recognised as a right by the pharmaceutical profession”.

The latest adverts, financed by the Ministry of Health, have put the centre-left administration on a collision course with the Vatican. The one being filmed yesterday shows the airport chemist’s shop, where a young man is trying to summon up the courage to ask for condoms. His girlfriend, impatient with his shyness, marches up to the counter and asks for them. An older couple waiting for a flight follow suit, and the chemist is suddenly inundated by passengers clamouring for condoms.

The advert, to be released in January, is directed by Francesca Archibugi, whose latest box-office hit in Italy is Flying Lessons. Ambra Angiolini, a well-known actress and TV host, will remind viewers of the “terrifying statistics” of Aids infection.

“Until now we always spoke about ‘safe sex’ on television, but no one dared to use the word condom,” Ms Archibugi said. “There has been a lot of resistance.” She told the Corriere della Sera that many young Italians thought of Aids as “something that has passed, like smallpox, and which people don’t catch any more”. Livia Turco, the Health Minister, said that the Pope had the right to “urge young people to be sexually responsible” but had “no business telling professionals such as pharmacists what to do”.

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