austraLasia 1494
Choose Life! A perspective on HIV/AIDS
(A 'toward #1500' entry - also from Melanesia)
HONIARA: 18th March 2006 -- Bishop Kevin Dowling CssR has been touring Melanesia with a simple message: "Choose Life - and do all we can to help others choose life!", his closing words at the Eucharistic celebration at Holy Cross Cathedral, Honiara this week. Bishop Dowling had just come from Papua New Guinea where he also spoke on the subject of HIV/AIDS. Bishop Dowling is Bishop of Rustenburg, the site of the world's largest platinum mines in North West South Africa - but also some of the worst squatter settlements in the nation, where HIV/AIDS is rife at 47.2% of the local population. He set up the Bishops' National AIDS Office which runs programs hardest hit in the five most worst affected nations in Africa.
The HIV and AIDS pandemic throughout the world is affecting every aspect of life today - individuals, families (especially), communities and societies, Bishop Dowling said. It is seriously impacting the economies of countries by taking skilled workers out of the market - sick, dying, unable to work. it even threatens the survival of some small societies or nations, e.g. Swaziland and Botswana - and Solomon Islands is a small nation of fewer than 500,000 people.
Bishop Dowling soon warmed to his real message, which was not one of scary statistics, but that people in societies such as in Melanesia are "religious" - the spiritual dimension is part of them, and can be built on. Churches and Faith communities can have a positive or negative effect on people by way of the attitudes and beliefs they build up in people and communities concerning HIV infection. "Our goal should be to enable people to affirm 'I am not this cancer of the bone...leukaemia...HIV positive...I am a person'. As a person I am not separate from the beauty of nature, animals, all forms of life. Everything is interconnected. Spiritual or being spiritual means regarding everything as sacred, and a way to transform myself/ourselves from within. It is a journey to awareness of God, a higher power, in me; to inner stillness, meaning, the ability to live in the now, to be present to myself and to God".
The bishop recognized that those who are dying of AIDS need accompaniment, and that people who share this aspect of those individuals' 'now' are crucial to positive, life-giving acceptance, to letting go of the past and the fear of the future. Bishop Dowling likened the opposite attitude - rejection - as akin to apartheid. The one discriminated on the basis of colour or race, the other discriminates on the basis of disease. The proper message is "God loves you and accepts you as you are. No matter what has happened in your life God loves and forgives. God will never reject you - we will not either".
In 2005, some 8.3 million people were living with HIV in Asia, including 1.1 million people who became newly infected in the past year. AIDS claimed some 520,000 lives in 2005. An estimated 74,000 people in Oceania are living with HIV. Although less than 4,000 people are believed to have died of AIDS in 2005, about 8,200 are thought to have become newly infected with HIV. Among young people 15–24 years of age, an estimated 1.2% of women and 0.4% of men were living with HIV in 2005.
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AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
Choose Life! A perspective on HIV/AIDS
(A 'toward #1500' entry - also from Melanesia)
HONIARA: 18th March 2006 -- Bishop Kevin Dowling CssR has been touring Melanesia with a simple message: "Choose Life - and do all we can to help others choose life!", his closing words at the Eucharistic celebration at Holy Cross Cathedral, Honiara this week. Bishop Dowling had just come from Papua New Guinea where he also spoke on the subject of HIV/AIDS. Bishop Dowling is Bishop of Rustenburg, the site of the world's largest platinum mines in North West South Africa - but also some of the worst squatter settlements in the nation, where HIV/AIDS is rife at 47.2% of the local population. He set up the Bishops' National AIDS Office which runs programs hardest hit in the five most worst affected nations in Africa.
The HIV and AIDS pandemic throughout the world is affecting every aspect of life today - individuals, families (especially), communities and societies, Bishop Dowling said. It is seriously impacting the economies of countries by taking skilled workers out of the market - sick, dying, unable to work. it even threatens the survival of some small societies or nations, e.g. Swaziland and Botswana - and Solomon Islands is a small nation of fewer than 500,000 people.
Bishop Dowling soon warmed to his real message, which was not one of scary statistics, but that people in societies such as in Melanesia are "religious" - the spiritual dimension is part of them, and can be built on. Churches and Faith communities can have a positive or negative effect on people by way of the attitudes and beliefs they build up in people and communities concerning HIV infection. "Our goal should be to enable people to affirm 'I am not this cancer of the bone...leukaemia...HIV positive...I am a person'. As a person I am not separate from the beauty of nature, animals, all forms of life. Everything is interconnected. Spiritual or being spiritual means regarding everything as sacred, and a way to transform myself/ourselves from within. It is a journey to awareness of God, a higher power, in me; to inner stillness, meaning, the ability to live in the now, to be present to myself and to God".
The bishop recognized that those who are dying of AIDS need accompaniment, and that people who share this aspect of those individuals' 'now' are crucial to positive, life-giving acceptance, to letting go of the past and the fear of the future. Bishop Dowling likened the opposite attitude - rejection - as akin to apartheid. The one discriminated on the basis of colour or race, the other discriminates on the basis of disease. The proper message is "God loves you and accepts you as you are. No matter what has happened in your life God loves and forgives. God will never reject you - we will not either".
In 2005, some 8.3 million people were living with HIV in Asia, including 1.1 million people who became newly infected in the past year. AIDS claimed some 520,000 lives in 2005. An estimated 74,000 people in Oceania are living with HIV. Although less than 4,000 people are believed to have died of AIDS in 2005, about 8,200 are thought to have become newly infected with HIV. Among young people 15–24 years of age, an estimated 1.2% of women and 0.4% of men were living with HIV in 2005.
_________________________
AustraLasia is an email service for the Salesian Family of Asia Pacific. It also functions as an agency for ANS based in Rome. For RSS feeds, subscribe to www.bosconet.aust.com/rssala.xml
