The Catholic New World: AIDS, Africa and us

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Jennifer Carr was reading the newspaper when she had a brainstorm: teddy bears with the red AIDS ribbon to spread awareness of the disease, encourage education efforts and raise money.

It was only Carr’s second day on the job as HIV/AIDS education coordinator for Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Galveston-Houston, and her supervisor wasn’t wild about the idea. But within three months, Carr and Holy Bears, a Houston-based Catholic company, had bears ready to sell.

Carr was to co-chair the 16th annual National Catholic AIDS conference July 17-22 at Loyola University Chicago’s Lakeshore Campus. About 250 people active in Catholic AIDS ministry, education, patients and family members were expected to gather together to learn the latest information, connect with one another and take time for spiritual renewal.

The 16th Annual gathering came less than a week after President Bush completed his five-nation tour of Africa, bringing renewed attention to the epicenter of the pandemic that has devastated several African countries and continues to extend its grip all over the world.

While most conference attendees work in the United States, the situation in Africa remains in their thoughts and prayers, leaders said. Several presentations and workshops were scheduled to discuss worldwide prevention and treatment efforts, including a July 19 presentation called “Sent Out—to Build Solidarity With Our Global Neighbors,” offered by Father Robert Vitillo and Helen Miramontes.

Vitillo, president of NCAN’s board, also serves as the co-chairman of the Caritas Internationalis committee on HIV/AIDS. Miramontes is a nurse who has been involved in AIDS prevention and treatment efforts for more than 20 years, and is planning to go to Botswana—where the infection rate tops 40 percent among adults—later this summer to train nurses to train other people to provide AIDS care.

“They’ve been doing this in a very difficult setting,” said Miramontes, 72, who had nothing but praise for the work of AIDS care providers, Catholic and otherwise, in Africa, who must cope with astronomical rates of infection, a huge social stigma that makes many people reluctant to even talk about the disease, and a dearth of the anti-retroviral drugs that have extended the life expectancies of AIDS patients in the developed world. “It’s devastating whole societies. You’re seeing elderly grandmothers trying to raise children, or older children raising children. … It’s not just a health-care problem. It’s an economic problem, it’s a political problem, and everything else, and it has to be addressed on all those levels.”

The Catholic Church was one of the first international bodies to respond, and still provides about 25 percent of the response to the worldwide crisis, whether through Caritas Internationalis, Catholic Relief Services or local parish AIDS ministries, said Father Rodney DeMartini, who will step aside in August after 12 years as the network’s executive director.

While the $15 billion in funding for AIDS prevention and treatment promised over the next five years by President Bush will be welcome, Miramontes said that much of that is not new funding, some may not be appropriated, and even if it is, it won’t be enough.

One thing Catholics in the United States can do is keep pressure on political leaders to put HIV/AIDS at the top of the priority list, she said.

“It’s part of the whole social teachings, social justice framework of the church, said Miramontes, who has been involved in NCAN for years but just joined into full communion with the church last year. “If we’re Christians, then we need to demonstrate that through our work. … I think AIDS is God’s challenge to us to be what we say we are.”

Carr, who has brought her AIDS education and awareness program to parishes throughout the Houston-Galveston area, said the bears provide an opportunity to show that as the Body of Christ, Catholics must care for all of their brothers and sisters around the world.

The original bears featured the AIDS ribbon wrapped around the Catholic Charities logo on their chests; a newer design moves that to the bear’s foot. On the chest is an outline of Africa, embraced by a circle of people.

The bears are marketed under the name “CC Bears,” with the Cs standing for any number of things: Chastity and compassion, being called by Christ, making conscious choices.

Three years later, Carr’s agency has sold thousands of bears at $10 each. Of that, $5 pays for the bears, $3 stays in the diocese for local AIDS prevention and education efforts and $2 goes to an AIDS clinic in operated by Dominican nuns in Zambia.

The $2 donation is significant: that pays for one dose of nevaripine, a drug that can be given to pregnant women just before delivery and then again to their newborn babies, reducing the risk of mother-to-baby transmission of the virus that causes AIDS by 50 percent.

“To say 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are living with HIV, as an individual, that can make me feel very powerless,” Carr said. “But my random idea became a way to provide hope for 3,000 babies.”

And probably more. Anyone can order the bears directly for $5 each from Holybears.com; $1 of the cost goes to Carr’s organization. But they can then re-sell them, and direct the profits wherever they wish, Carr said. Several Dominican congregations have sold hundreds of the bears and sent the proceeds directly to African AIDS clinics.

To make it even easier, Carr said, she will send a CD with the curriculum she built around the bears to anyone who requests it for a $5 donation.

It’s only by getting one person at a time to take action that the problem can be solved, Carr said.

“To me, it’s really about the power of one individual,” she said. “It comes down to personal solidarity, personal compassion, personal responsibility.”

For more information about CC Bears, e-mail Jennifer Carr at [email protected] or call her at (713) 874-6671.