Yes, if you see things only in absolutes, the statement makes no sense at all. That's one of the reasons why the Catholic Church avoided giving any sort of approval to condoms in the first place. Now that they've bowed to common sense and admitted that condoms can prevent disease, the statement will be distorted in all sorts of ways.
If you want to understand this pope, you have to listen to his entire statements, not just sound bites. He's actually quite rational in what he says, if you take the time to follow his thinking.
This New York Times article will give somewhat of an idea.

The churches have to uphold the ideal of a faithful sexual relationship within the context of marriage - you really can't fault them for wanting to do that. And really, in our heart of hearts we all know that a faithful marriage and a stable family is a good thing.

But what if the ideal isn't possible? Well, then, you have to do what you can to deal with reality and still respect the ideal. You have to balance the ideal with common sense.

Don't expect churches to promote promiscuity, but what if promiscuity is the reality? Well, then, there is a great risk of the spread of sexually-transmitted disease (STD); and morality demands that at the very least, something must be done to prevent STD epidemics. In that case, condoms would certainly be helpful.

For most of its history, the Catholic Church has attempted to avoid moral absolutism; and yet many forces within and outside the church have tried to box the church into a corner of absolutism. In the Christian faith, there are really only two moral absolutes: love God above all things, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. To make a moral decision, you have to consider all the factors in the light of these two principles, and temper it all with a lot of common sense.

Now, I suppose you could find fault with Catholic opposition to birth control. From an absolutist position, I would suppose you would be correct. But somehow, a huge number of Catholic families get along without procreating huge numbers of children. I suppose every parish has a couple of families with lots and lots of kids, but that's unusual in cultures where people have small families. In our parish, we have one family with six kids (four are adopted) and one with four (all adopted); and a couple very conservative, severe families that just keep having kids. All the others have two or three kids, which seems to me to be fairly responsible population control.

So, what's the deal here? Well, maybe Catholic families have learned to live by rational principles, rather than by blind moral absolutes. This is a brief summary of the moral theology I was taught in a Catholic seminary in the 1960s - which really isn't a whole lot different from the way it was taught for centuries before. A lot of people (including a lot of priests and bishops) aren't smart enough to realize the balance and common sense that is involved in making a moral decision, and that's where people get bound up in moral absolutes.

-Joe-