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."

Article from: the ACC-12 News Team - Dan England, Margaret Rodgers, James Rosenthal