c. 2006 Religion News Service
Critics Chide U.N. Summit on AIDS for Inaction
NEW YORK (RNS) A three-day United Nations meeting on the global AIDS pandemic has ended with a declaration that some diplomats praised as a landmark but that AIDS activists _ including at least one prominent religious figure _ called a failure.
“Once more we are disappointed at the failure to demonstrate real political leadership in the fight against the pandemic,” Anglican Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane of Cape Town, South Africa, said in a statement following the three-day meeting that ended June 2.
“Even at this late stage, we call on the world’s political leaders to rise up and meet the challenges that the pandemic presents and to set ambitious targets at a national level to guarantee universal access to treatment, care, support and prevention,” the Anglican cleric said.
The statement, on the 25th anniversary of the deadly epidemic, made specific references to condom use _ a move opposed by a number of Latin American and predominantly Muslim countries.
The U.N. document “moves the global response to AIDS a significant step forward by acknowledging both the need for AIDS crisis management today and for a sustained, long-term response to AIDS in the years to come,” said Peter Piot, executive director of UNAIDS, the agency coordinating the United Nations’ response to AIDS.
But the language of the U.N. declaration fell short of what many activists had sought, including specific references to those most affected by HIV/AIDS, including gay men, drug users and sex workers. It also, critics said, refused to commit U.N. member states to hard numerical targets on funding of AIDS prevention, care and treatment.
“The final outcome document is pathetically weak,” said Sisonke Msimang of the African Civil Society Coalition. “It is remarkable at this stage in the global epidemic that governments cannot set the much-needed targets nor can they name in the document the very people that are most vulnerable.”
Ndungane’s disappointment with the final document was in some ways not surprising. In an interview prior to the conclusion of the meeting, the Anglican archbishop _ who has not been shy about criticizing the South African government for its response to the AIDS crisis in his country _ said he was wary of a statement without teeth.
He said it would be up to civil and religious groups to hold diplomats and political leaders to task if a declaration proved weak.
“Words, words, words _ they won’t help us fight the pandemic,” he said, adding: “I’m a born optimist, but politicians are politicians.”
_ Chris Herlinger
HIV-Positive Priest Tries to Remove AIDS Stigma
NEW YORK (RNS) The first Anglican priest in Africa to publicly acknowledge his HIV status, the Rev. Gideon Byamugisha of Uganda, addressed a U.N. General Assembly high-level plenary meeting on June 2.
“Your Excellencies, I am a person of faith, a religious leader, and yes … a person living with HIV,” began Byamugisha, as he addressed world leaders gathered for the meeting on AIDS.
“I must confess to you that quite often I grow weary and frightened when I imagine how future generations will look back to this 25th anniversary of the suffering and death caused by AIDS.”
Byamugisha first announced his HIV status in 1992, in an attempt to help to destigmatize the labels placed on those living with the virus. He is the founder of ANERELA (the African Network of Religious Leaders Living With or Personally Affected by HIV/AIDS), and he is an adviser to the HIV and AIDS Hope Initiative for Christian group World Vision.
He is also the author of five books on HIV/AIDS and the former commissioner of the Uganda AIDS Commission. His wife, Pamela, was herself previously widowed by the disease.
Byamugisha outlined the steps needed for “transforming the AIDS landscape with total commitment,” including the ending of stigma and discrimination against those living with the disease, the empowerment of women, and the implementation of what he called “comprehensive, evidence-informed and rights-based prevention strategies.”
“The greatest and most obvious gaps that survivors will wonder about, and be angry about,” he said, “are the missed opportunities, the lack of political will and the lack of total commitment by those of us in leadership positions to use all that we knew and all that we had to fight the pandemic.
“They will surely ask, `What went wrong?’ `What prevented us from transforming the knowledge and the resources we had into focused will and targeted action?’ `Who were the world leaders at that time?”’
_ Nate Herpich
N.J. Priest Who Stole Trades Parish for Prison
RUMSON, N.J. (RNS) The Catholic priest who lived the high life on money he stole from his well-to-do Rumson parish is now behind bars.
The Rev. Joseph W. Hughes was locked up in the Monmouth County Jail on June 2 after a Superior Court judge turned aside his pleas for leniency and sentenced him to five years in prison.
Hughes soon will be moved to state custody, and the judge likely will recommend incarceration in a minimum-security prison.
Hughes and his attorney argued that his many good works, his charitable nature, his faltering health, his success at Holy Cross Church and a tradition in church law that gives a pastor great leeway in deciding how to spend parish money were all facts that favored a light sentence.
Superior Court Judge Bette E. Uhrmacher disagreed. She told Hughes that his theft of church money had eroded the trust parishioners have in their clergy. “That trust may never be returned,” she said.
The priest pleaded guilty in May to taking in excess of $75,000 in parish money. The Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office put the figure at $2 million. Though Hughes did not plead guilty to stealing the full amount, he did agree as part of his plea deal to repay it. He also agreed to pay $120,229 to the state in back taxes.
Hughes’ attorney, Michael Pappa, said his client no longer has “two nickels to rub together,” and prosecutor Luis A. Valentin acknowledged that a 63-year-old priest with an extended jail term ahead of him will probably never earn enough money to repay the debts.
Hughes told the judge he is by nature excessively charitable. He said the burdens of counseling a parish hit hard by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and fighting opponents of a parish expansion project he had championed, may have caused him to exercise bad judgment in his handling of parish money.
“It took a toll that I was probably not even aware of on my life,” he said. “My way of dealing with that stress was to give and to give and to give.”
Hughes offered an apology but did not acknowledge that much of the parish money he misappropriated was spent not on charitable causes but to support his lavish lifestyle.
Assistant Monmouth County Prosecutor John F. Loughrey told Uhrmacher that over a five-month period in 1998, expenditures included nearly $6,000 for three separate stays at a Marriott hotel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., bills for stays at hotels in Princeton and New York, airline tickets worth more than $1,000 and nearly $200 in limo fees.
_ Tom Feeney
Prison Fellowship Program in Iowa Ruled Unconstitutional
(RNS) Prison Fellowship officials plan to appeal a district judge’s ruling that declared their faith-based program in an Iowa prison unconstitutional.
Chief Judge Robert W. Pratt ruled June 2 that the InnerChange Freedom Initiative “has the primary effect of impermissibly endorsing religion” through its contract with the state corrections department.
“For all practical purposes, the state has literally established an evangelical Christian congregation within the walls of one (of) its penal institutions, giving the leaders of that congregation, i.e., InnerChange employees, authority to control the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of hundreds of Iowa inmates,” Pratt wrote in a 140-page decision from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.
He said the program was “pervasively sectarian,” requiring participants to attend worship services, weekly revivals and religious community meetings. Participating inmates also were ordered to “engage in daily religious devotional practice,” he said.
Mark Earley, president of Prison Fellowship, said in a statement that his organization would appeal the decision to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“This decision, if it is allowed to stand, will enshrine religious discrimination,” said the president of the Virginia-based ministry founded by former Nixon aide and Watergate felon Chuck Colson. “The courts took God out of America’s schools; now they are on the path to take God out of America’s prisons.”
The executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which filed suit against the program in 2003, hailed Pratt’s ruling.
“There is no way to interpret this decision as anything but a body blow to so-called faith-based initiatives,” said the Rev. Barry Lynn, whose watchdog group has been critical of President Bush’s efforts to increase access to government funding for faith-based groups.
“Tax funds cannot underwrite conversion efforts.”
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Pratt’s decision called for the program to end within 60 days and for InnerChange and Prison Fellowship to repay the corrections department more than $1.5 million the program has received since its relationship with the department began in 1999. But those orders were suspended pending an expected appeal.
Other than Iowa, the program is established in prisons in Texas, Kansas, Minnesota and Arkansas. Prison Fellowship began the program in 1997 and it is now a separate entity that contracts with Prison Fellowship for support and staffing services.
_ Adelle M. Banks
Quote of the Day: Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong
(RNS) “All they asked for was a clean government _ is that a sin? And what they wished for was a strong nation _ is that a sin? All we’re doing is pursuing their aspirations.”
_ Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong, marking the 17th anniversary of the pro-democracy demonstration in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, in which students were killed. He was quoted by The New York Times.
KRE/PH END RNS
