08/20/00

Pastoral charity, medical care and the AIDS epidemic

The National Catholic HIV/AIDS Ministry held its annual conference in Chicago at the end of July. Present and participating were doctors and medical people, caregivers, social workers and analysts, some who are themselves suffering from the disease, chaplains and ministers. All of them were acutely aware of the spiritual and physical cost of a disease which is now part of public consciousness but which still escapes scientific and even popular understanding. Because there are new drugs which retard advance of the disease, some think there is a cure. Because it’s mainly a sexually transmitted disease, associated with “gay” sex and drug addiction, many are surprised to learn that most new victims are children and women in the poorer countries of the world.

The national Catholic conference in Chicago followed on the heels of an international conference held in the city of Durban, South Africa. The countries of sub-Saharan Africa are particularly hard hit by AIDS. In Zambia, for example, almost an entire generation is being eradicated, leaving very small orphans to be cared for by grandparents who have to continue working in the fields at a time in their lives when they thought they would be helped by their own children. The Church in Zambia runs huge day care centers in villages in order to accommodate babies and children while their grandparents are working. The infrastructure of education, business, trades and political order is slowly dissolving in some countries as men and women in their middle years are taken by death.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta prayed often that science would find a cure for AIDS. In the meantime, the Catholic Church, along with many other religious groups, has created treatment centers and approached people with AIDS as sick people who need special spiritual and physical help. The Pontifical Council for the Family has sponsored meetings with the doctors and nurses most involved, often heroically and at great personal cost, in the fight against AIDS. Many medical personnel, religious and lay, have shown a dedication rooted in their own love for the suffering Christ. Beyond physical care, the Church offers the grace of God which enables people to change behaviors that bring death, both spiritual and physical. Catholic care for AIDS victims and approaches to conquering the disease are rooted in a vision beyond the merely medical. This is sometimes understood and sometimes not. What is clear, however, is that, while AIDS is now disproportionately killing the poor, poverty as such is not the cause of the disease. Other environmental factors are the condition of women and the respect due them, the strength of marriage and of other social institutions in a society, and the prevalence of prostitution, both male and female. These are anthropological and spiritual issues more than they are medical or even economic.

In the Archdiocese of Chicago, Catholics Charities is the catalyst for much of the Church’s outreach to AIDS victims. Catholics hospitals have been exemplary in offering ongoing care for those sick with AIDS. In a unique fashion, Bonaventure House, a facility sponsored by the Alexian Brothers, provides a place for those suffering from AIDS to live in dignity and, often, to die in peace and in God’s grace. Bishop Edwin Conway has been particularly generous in accompanying this ministry and helping to keep it well organized. Marianne Zelewsky is the outgoing consultant for Catholic Charities’ HIV/AIDS services. The last report this extraordinarily dedicated woman gave me explained that, even in the United States, the level of new infections continues to hold steady rather than decrease. We are better at research and care than at prevention. Locally, the Catholic Church is more involved in providing services to people in Lake County, because there are fewer care providers in Lake County than in Cook County.

The Catholic schools have an advantage in educating young people about AIDS because they are free to include the all important moral teaching necessary to address the epidemic fully. Along with parochial and institutional initiatives, conferences and study groups complement the direct ministry of accompanying those with AIDS through life and death. Those engaged in this ministry of the Church all agree that they receive much strength and moral insight from those they work with and for. People who suffer have much to teach everyone.

And that is why the Church, locally and internationally, has been and will continue to be engaged in this ministry. Wherever there is suffering, the Church gathers. Christ suffers, and Christ comforts the suffering; Christ is sick, and Christ visits the sick; Christ is isolated, and Christ embraces AIDS victims and takes care of their loved ones and orphans.

In the last decade, 18 million people have died of AIDS, of whom almost four million were children. In the world today, an estimated 34.3 million people have HIV/AIDS, of whom a million and a half are children under 15 years of age. Please keep these men, women and children in your prayers. Please support their caregivers and those working to prevent and cure HIV/AIDS. God bless you.

God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

Back to Archive 2000