VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI sought to “kick-start a debate” when he said some condom use may be justified, Vatican insiders say, raising hopes the church may be starting to back away from a complete ban and allow condoms to play a role in the battle against AIDS.

Just a year after he said condoms could be making the AIDS crisis worse, Benedict said that for some people, such as male prostitutes, using them could be a step in assuming moral responsibility because the intent is to “reduce the risk of infection.”

The pope did not suggest using condoms as birth control, which is banned by the church, or mention the use of condoms by married couples where one partner is infected.

Still, some saw the pope’s comments as an attempt to move the church forward on the issue of condoms and health risks.

For years, divisions in the Vatican have held up any effort to reconcile the church’s ban on contraception with the need to help halt the spread of AIDS. Theologians have studied the possibility of condoning limited condom use as a lesser evil, and reports years ago said the Vatican was considering a document on the issue, though opposition apparently blocked publication.

One senior Vatican official said Monday he believed the pope just “wanted to kick-start the debate.” He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

For the deeply conservative Benedict, it seemed like a bold leap into modernity — and a nightmare for many at the Vatican. The pope’s comments sparked a fierce debate among Catholics, politicians and health workers that is certain to reverberate for a long time despite frantic damage control at the Vatican.

In a sign of the tensions, the Holy See’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, rushed out a statement to counter any impression the church might lift its ban on artificial birth control. Lombardi stressed the pope’s comment neither “reforms nor changes” church teaching.

While much of the world hailed Benedict’s statement as a major shift toward lifting the church ban, conservatives insisted the pontiff was not “justifying” condom use from a theological point of view.

Many Vatican observers were struck by the example the pope used – that of a male prostitute – though the comments clearly were not meant to condone prostitution or homosexual conduct, which the church condemns as “intrinsically disordered.”

And while Benedict made only a tiny opening, he stepped where no pope has gone since Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which was supposed to have closed debate on church policy barring Catholics from using condoms and other artificial contraception.

Notably, the pope chose to make his statement in an interview with a German journalist, Peter Seewald, and not in an official document. Excerpts of Seewald’s book, “Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times,” first appeared Saturday in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.

Luigi Accattoli, a veteran Vatican journalist who will be on a Vatican panel launching the book today, said Benedict had taken a “long-awaited” step that only the highest authority of the church could do.”