France’s First Lady Offers Unkind Words Regarding the Pope
WASHINGTON (Catholic Online) – Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the first lady of France, had harsh words to say regarding Pope Benedict XVI, particular with respect to his comments on contraception in Africa.

The Italian-born wife of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whom she married in February, 2008, made her comments in Femme Actuelle, a women’s magazine.

"I find that the controversy coming from the Pope's message – albeit distorted by the media – is very damaging,” Bruni said.

"In Africa it's often Church people who look after sick people. It's astonishing to see the difference between the theory and the reality.”

Bruni was not only unhappy with the Pontiff’s words and position regarding contraception, but also had direction she wanted to give to the Church about the topic.

"I think the Church should evolve on this issue,” she stated. “It presents the condom as a contraceptive which, incidentally, it forbids, although it is the only existing protection.”

Bruni and her husband have both declared they are Catholics.

Such comments from the wife of a French President have been received with some shock in the country. It has not been customary for someone in her position to comment on religious issues, particularly with the country being predominantly Catholic. In directly attacking the Pope and saying that the Church should evolve, she may have put her husband in an awkward position.

The interview had some commentators concerned about her perspective that the Church made her feel “secular.”

“With the Church serving as the Christ’s presence on Earth,” one commented, “the teachings put forth may make a member feel secular when that person is at odds with the Faith which was delivered to the Saints. This may actually be the Holy Spirit’s conviction at work.”

The reason for her candor in the article may come, in part, due to the strong reaction among French Catholics with regard to the message on contraception by the Holy Father. Bruni-Sarkozy may feel she is sending a message to sympathetic ears.

Catholic Online (http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=33616)

First ever conference on AIDS and faith brings together
communities of faith and people affected by HIV

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 26 – A historic conference on Latinos, faith, culture and HIV came come to a conclusion yesterday with an unprecedented call to action...

In addition to the united statement of purpose, over 250 conference participants offered emotionally charged testimonies regarding the role of Latino faith and the need for education and testing. Fifty one attendees were tested for HIV at the conference, including community leaders, priests and ministers, who urged other clergy and community members to test for HIV.

Richard Zaldivar, executive director and founder of The Wall Las Memorias Project said, “This was a great day in which all of us took ownership for educating our Latino community about HIV/AIDS. The conference was an expression of our culture in which we came together as a community. We talked about issues that made us uncomfortable, but we shared our concerns and ideas in an atmosphere of love, compassion and respect.”

Participating in the call to action were long-time UFW leader Dolores Huerta, Los Angeles City Council Member Ed Reyes, Assembly Member Kevin de Leon, clergy and congregant leaders of Los Angeles County.

“On a spiritual level, many Latino communities have been challenged by the devastating effects of AIDS,” said Father Will Wauters of the Historic Epiphany Episcopal Church in Lincoln Heights. As a result, he said, religious leaders have reached out and advocated for families who have suffered stigma and exclusion.

“Our families in the Latino community cannot afford to make any assumptions about who may or may not be infected with the HIV virus,” said Wauters. “Regretfully it is a disease ‘por toda nuestra communidad.’ We cannot afford to ignore any part of our community that may be infected. We need to live and love with compassion and intelligence.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AIDS disproportionately affects the Latino community in the United States. While Latinos comprise nearly 14 percent of the U.S. population, they account for an estimated 19 percent of new AIDS cases diagnosed in 2005. While they represent 18 percent of young adults in 2005, Latinos aged 20-24 accounted for 22 percent new AIDS cases reported among this group. At the end of 2006, more than 8,679 Latinos were living with AIDS in Los Angeles County.

“The event was more than a conference among church leaders and congregants. It was about families coming together in a state of emergency to talk, trust, pray and act in a loving manner,” stated Michael A. Mata, capacity development director, World Vision.

The conference opened with a prayer by Fr. Richard Estrada, executive director of Jovenes, Inc., followed by the welcome address by Dr. Robert Ross, president and chief executive officer of the California Endowment.

Also addressing the conference was the senior director of PhRMA, Patricia Alvarez-Sahagun. Providing an overview of HIV/AIDS in Los Angeles County was Paulina Zamudio, senior program manager of the Los Angeles County Office of AIDS Programs and Policy. An overview of HIV/AIDS along the U.S.-Mexican border was presented by Dr. George Lemp, director of the California AIDS Research Program.

Prior to the call to action press event, conference participants heard from Dr. Harry Pachon of the Tomas Rivera Institute USC, who spoke about the groundbreaking Pew-sponsored study, “Latinos and Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion.” Also addressed in the morning session was Dr. Marvin J. Southard, director of the Los Angeles County Mental Health Department, who spoke about the stigma, associated with mental health.

Workshops were held throughout the day, including one that addressed the issue of Latinas and AIDS, which was facilitated by Dr. Britt Ellis-Rios of NCLR and California State University Long Beach. An update of research findings was given by Katheryn Derose of the RAND Corporation.

In addition, Leilani Montes of The Wall Las Memorias Project led a workshop on how to build AIDS ministries. One of the many highlights of the day was the public conversation among faith leaders and people living with HIV/AIDS facilitated by Rev. Kathy Cooper-Ledesma, pastor of Hollywood United Methodist Church and board member for The Wall Last Memorias Project.

In a prepared statement, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson stated, “As the rate of AIDS continues to rise in the Latino community, we must draw strength from our community, culture and our faith.” Governor Richardson is a supporter of the project and recently attended the final mural unveiling at the AIDS monument in Lincoln Park.
(http://thewalllasmemorias.org/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=14)

August 2003

• Introduction
• What the Faith-Based Initiative, as Envisioned by President Bush, Would Do
• Faith-Based Organizations Have a Long History of Health and Human Service Work in the U.S.
• Partnerships Between the Federal Government and Faith-Based Organizations Are Not New
• Faith-Based and Community Organizations Have Been Long-Engaged in the Response to HIV/AIDS
• AIDS Action's Policies

Introduction In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the welfare reform bill (known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act). A key feature of this act was its "charitable choice" provisions. Charitable Choice promoted the idea of states cooperating with faith-based and community organizations to involve them in the provision of health, social, and human services that could be eligible for federal dollars. Charitable Choice also protected the religious character of the participating religious organizations and the religious freedoms of the beneficiaries of these organizations' programs and services.

The Bush Administration has made the support for and involvement of faith-based and community organizations in health, human, and social services one of its top domestic priorities. In signing Executive Order 13198n on January 29, 2001, President Bush, established the Centers for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives in five cabinet departments (Departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, and Education). Through this executive order and others, President Bush seeks to create a "level playing field" -- that is, an equal and fair opportunity -- for faith-based and community organizations to compete for federal resources to support program they have developed in response to community needs.

What the Faith-Based Initiative, as Envisioned by President Bush, Would Do The text of another executive order issued by President Bush on December 12, 2002, entitled Equal Protection of the Laws for Faith-Based and Community Organizations, provides a description of the fundamental objectives of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative. They are as follows:

1. Prevent organizations from being discriminated against "on the basis of religion or religious belief in the administration or distribution of federal financial assistance under social service programs."
2. Prevent discrimination against current or prospective program beneficiaries on the basis of "religion, a religious belief, a refusal to hold a religious belief, or a refusal to actively participate in a religious practice."
3. Ensure that faith-based and community organizations are eligible to compete for federal financial assistance used to support social service programs and "to participate fully in the social service programs supported with federal financial assistance without impairing their independence, autonomy, expression, or religious character."
4. Require organizations that engage in "inherently religious activities, such as worship, religious instruction, and proselytization," to offer those services "separately in time or location from any programs or services supported with direct federal financial assistance and ensure that participation in any such inherently religious activities is voluntary for the beneficiaries of the social service program."

Faith-Based Organizations Have a Long History of Health and Human Service Work in the U.S. America has a long history of health, human, and social service delivery by faith-based organizations. In the United States, these organizations have been providing essential services, such as child welfare, medical care, child care, housing, transportation, and counseling since the founding of the nation -- and their work continues. In conducting this work, faith-based organizations have filled or reduced existing holes in federal, state, and local governments' "safety net" of service programs. What follows is a brief description of some of the services provided by faith-based organizations.

The Salvation Army USA, well known for its multitude of community services, rehabilitation programs, and family services, provides a range of services that include emergency lodging, financial assistance, daycare services, substance abuse services, mental health care, respite care, and help locating missing persons.

Catholic Charities USA has a long history of providing social-safety-net services; through its community educational programs, it has provided educational support for parish-based services and has raised HIV/AIDS awareness. In 2002, its agencies provided help and created hope for more than seven million people.

The Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services (JBFCS) of New York has been a leader in treating social problems for more than 110 years. It established the first mental health program of "permanency planning" for the children of parents living with AIDS.

The Islamic Society of Northern America (ISNA) has provided a range of services to achieve its vision of contributing to the betterment of the Muslim community and society at large.


Partnerships Between the Federal Government and Faith-Based Organizations Are Not New Faith-based and community organizations have been eligible for federal funding for decades, and many have secured it -- including organizations responding to HIV/AIDS.

In New York City, God's Love We Deliver (GLWD) has been preparing and delivering nutritious, high quality meals to men, women, and children living with HIV/AIDS since 1985. GLWD began its work by preparing and delivering 50 meals per day from the kitchen of West Park Presbyterian Church, and 2001, it delivered its five-millionth meal. In 1991, GLWD received its first funding from the Ryan White Care Act.

In Minneapolis, MN, Community Fitness Today (CFT) improves the health of minorities through education, fitness, nutrition, and prevention services. It began when Marie Graham and the late Dwight McWilliams approached their pastor with an idea for a program to educate parishioners about HIV/AIDS. CFT is supported by the American Red Cross African American HIV/AIDS program, which is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In Nashville, Tennessee, Metropolitan Interdenominational Church, through its First Response Center, provides SAMHSA-funded substance abuse outreach and HIV prevention services based on the religious tenet "whosoever" may enter is welcome and on scientifically proven public health models of harm and risk reduction.


Faith-Based and Community Organizations Have Been Long-Engaged in the Response to HIV/AIDS The HIV/AIDS services provided by the organizations that have been discussed thus far are not unusual. Almost since the beginning of the AIDS crisis in the U.S., faith-based organizations have been part of the domestic response. Many churches, religious institutions, and faith-based organizations have AIDS ministries and community outreach programs specializing in services for HIV/AIDS prevention education. Several such organizations are highlighted below.

The Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, the second oldest congregation in the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, has been responding to the domestic HIV/AIDS crisis since the 1980s. MCC San Francisco offers a continuing array of pastoral services, group support, and education for those with HIV/AIDS and other chronic and life threatening illnesses, such as breast cancer.

Building trust and transforming lives, the health clinic of the Glide Memorial Methodist Church (known as the Glide-Goodlett HIV/AIDS Project and Recovery programs) provides housing and supportive services in downtown San Francisco which offer much more than treatment and advice. They give respect and support to people long accustomed to getting neither.

Based in Seattle, Washington, Multifaith Works is a nonprofit, nondenominational organization. Representing a network of churches, Multifaith Works provides housing and supportive services to people living with life-threatening illnesses, including AIDS. As part of its AIDS Care Team Program, Multifaith Works recruits and trains volunteers to provide practical support and friendship to people living with HIV/AIDS.

Since 1989, The Balm In Gilead, through its Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS, has been the catalyst for educating and mobilizing over 10,000 churches to provide AIDS education for their congregations and communities. Today, with an estimated reach of over 2.5 million individuals, the Black Church Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS is the nation's largest AIDS awareness program targeting the African American community. The Balm In Gilead recently began an HIV/AIDS religious leadership training program in five African countries.

AIDS Action's Policies Faith-based and community organizations are currently providing a variety of services to people living with HIV/AIDS. Properly designed, the faith-based and community initiative will help to expand the national response to HIV/AIDS. AIDS Action supports the Faith-Based Initiative with the following provisions:

• The Faith-Based and Community Initiative itself should be funded with new money. Moreover, new money should be added to the already existing appropriations for all HIV/AIDS programs whose applicant base will be expanded by the implementation of the Faith-Based and Community Initiative.
• The official definitions of "faith-based and community organizations" must be broad enough to capture the full range of diversity within the U.S. faith and social services community. Additionally, emphasis should be placed on smaller faith-based and community organizations in order to enhance and strengthen their capacity to respond to community needs.
• When assessing faith-based and community organizations as applicants for federal funding, the government should give priority consideration to those applicants who, as they develop and implement their HIV/AIDS programs, seek the counsel and collaboration of individuals living with and affected by HIV/AIDS.
• Faith-based and community organizations must use scientifically evaluated methods in their delivery of HIV/AIDS prevention, care, and support services and must exercise non-discriminatory hiring practices.

(http://www.thebody.com/content/art33782.html#bush)

South Africa’s northwest province, Winterveldt, is referred to as “no man’s land.” An impoverished area about 40 km northwest of Pretoria, the land is neither fertile, nor desirable, but it became a destination for those segregated due to apartheid and those who did not belong to South African Tribes. It was some of the first land that black South Africans were allowed to purchase. Approximately 398,000 people live in Winterveldt and the rate of unemployment is 70 percent. There is little sanitation, electricity or social infrastructure.

Catholic Medical Mission Board (CMMB) and its partners support Mercy Clinic – one of the few health-care facilities in Winterveldt – and its delivery of health-care to the area. This is done in collaboration with the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference and Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation through Choose to Care, an HIV and AIDS prevention, care and support program. Since 2000, the program has helped build the capacity of more than 140 community-based organizations focused on care of the dying, orphan care and placement and HIV and AIDS education in five countries: South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Swaziland and Lesotho. The program focuses on community-based solutions for orphans and families suffering from the enormous impact of the HIV and AIDS pandemic in southern Africa. Currently, there are approximately 115 Winterveldt people that are visited by community health-care workers trained by the Mercy Clinic program.

Mercy Clinic employs five community health-care workers who provide basic health services to HIV and AIDS patients, and take care of those orphaned by parents who died from AIDS. Many of the orphans remain in the community with extended families. The community health-care workers make sure that the orphans’ social and emotional needs are met. They take care of the children’s educational needs by providing for school fees and uniforms.

CMMB and its partners have launched A Faith-Based Response to HIV in Southern Africa: the Choose to Care Initiative, a study published as part of the UNAIDS Best Practice Collection. The study describes the work of this groundbreaking collaboration that was the first to include faith-based partners to increase health-care services to those hardest hit by the pandemic in southern Africa.

The study highlights that the effective scaling-up of programs in response to the virus does not always lead to the expansion of single central services. Choose to Care is a best practice because it is implemented through the diocesan and parish system. The Catholic Church scaled up HIV programs by the replication of smaller scale programs rooted in and responsive to the needs expressed by local communities in the five countries Choose to Care was implemented. The study demonstrates that this type of approach is effective when undertaken within common guidelines and given central support.

The study describes the types of activities the initiative engaged in to provide prevention; care and treatment services for those infected and affected particularly orphans and vulnerable children. Areas of HIV education and service delivery that were developed as a result of the Choose to Care initiative included those that focused on: prevention, care, treatment, services for orphans and vulnerable children, advocacy, capacity building, interfaith involvement, theological reflection.

Choose to Care now reaches 98 percent of South Africa’s Catholic dioceses with HIV and AIDS education or home-based care programs. As a result, 45 schools in eight of South Africa’s nine provinces have integrated HIV education into their standard curricula.

The rapid success of the initial Choose to Care projects led to their replication in South Africa, Swaziland, Botswana and Namibia. In 2003, the SACBC and CMMB engaged the Department of Sociology at the University of Pretoria as and independent evaluator of the overall initiative as well as 61 participating projects.

The following summary conclusion was drawn by the evaluators:

“While there is a general acknowledgment within the church itself that the Church was initially slow to respond to the magnitude of the problem of HIV and AIDS, during the recent past, as the effects of HIV and AIDS within the congregations and communities of the church have become progressively more evident, the Catholic Church has emerged as an increasingly central role-player in a range of initiatives to combat the pandemic.”

In addition they included the following comment from the South Africa Department of Social Development, at the Department of Sociology at the University of Pretoria:

“The church is one of the primary…resources for AIDS work in South Africa. The church’s interventions often seem more successful than government interventions. The church has the infrastructure, passion, and dedication to address HIV and AIDS.”

One of the strongest examples of why the Choose to Care initiative is part of the UNAIDS Best Practice Collection is how it strategically prepared the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops’ Conference AIDS Office to establish a firm foundation for their efforts, to attain universal access to HIV prevention, education, care and support, as well as to antiretroviral treatment. In cooperation with CMMB and its participating program partners in southern Africa, they prepared for the goals of universal access by serving as a pioneer in gaining access to antiretroviral medications in this region and then in building capacity among its partners so that these medications would be administered in a responsible manner.

In 2004, the United States President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) agreed to fund antiretroviral treatment in South Africa and several other countries. One major PEPFAR grant for treatment is being channeled through the AIDSRelief Consortium which is coordinated by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and of which CMMB is a member. In collaboration with the AIDSRelief Consortium, The Bishops’ Conference AIDS office coordinates the antiretroviral therapy program for some 20 sites providing treatment in South Africa.

The study demonstrates that Choose to Care projects are valued both for their compassion and practical effectiveness; through personal testimony from healthcare professionals, volunteers, academic evaluations, and by those infected and affected by HIV. In 2006, the strength of the Choose to Care model continues in southern Africa as many of the projects inaugurated during the initial five-year development period are continuing and being sustained by new sources of support.

(http://www.globalhealth.org/reports/report.php3?id=268)