wfn.org | ACNS - HIV/AIDS: This past year the whole Communion has woken up

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

ACNS 3138 - ACC12 MEDIA RELEASE NO 6 - 20 September 2002

HIV/AIDS: This past year the whole Communion has woken up

Presentation to ACC-12 from Canon Ted Karpf

19th September 2002

"Please, please do not let the birthplace of humankind become the burial
place of our humanity." With those words, The Reverend Canon Ted Karpf today
summed up a presentation before the Anglican Consultative Council on the
church? response to HIV/AIDS since the All-Africa Anglican Aids Conference
in August, 2001. That conference, held in Boksburg, South Africa, and
chaired by Archbishop Ndungane, was the first effort to form a strategic
response to HIV/AIDs in diocese of the Church of the Province of Southern
Africa.

"It's been an exciting year, a wonderful year," Karpf said about progress
since Boksburg. "I think during this past year the whole Communion has woken
up" to the AIDS problem. Karpf emphasized several times in his remarks
statements from the African Primates of the Anglican Communion that
supported HIV/AIDS work and re-commissioned Archbishop Ndungane in his
leadership on the issue on behalf of the Anglican Communion. "It shows you
the power of leadership in our system. Once they, as Africans, declared that
AIDS was not a punishment from God, in effect, it was a declaration for the
whole church. It's made a huge difference."

In citing specific progress, he said Uganda was "leading the way in ending
discrimination and stigma." He attributed much of the success in the church
to HIV-positive priest, Gideon Byamugisha, who has "travelled the world
telling the Uganda story."

In Nigeria, he said, "an AIDS clinic has been established at the Provincial
Office of the Archbishop" as part of the effort there to model the role of
the Church in the local community and to "correct local myths and
profiteering." The Church in Tanzania has openly discussed and endorsed the
efficacy of condoms. AIDS prevention training is being offered to Sunday
School teachers in Ghana, while in South Africa, the Church has just
completed strategic planning in 22 dioceses with more than 1000 people,
though, Karpf noted, throughout Africa, famine is severely hampering
efforts.

Asked whether such examples would have been possible before Boksburg and the
meeting of the Primates, Karpf said that individual acts of welcome and
compassion were always in evidence in the African church, "but now it's
intentional and across the board."

He challenged the delegates to the ACC to become involved: "if you are
standing back, you need to answer why." The Archbishop of Canterbury
described the presentation as "brilliant," though he added with a shake of
the head, "we have a long way to go."

(From the ACC-12 News Team: Dan England, Margaret Rodgers, James Rosenthal)

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