kenya archbishop apology to hiv/aids victims welcomed, praised

Source: The Christian Post

March 20, 2006: The Rev. Benjamin Nzimbi, Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Kenya, was praised this week for the recent public apology he made to HIV/AIDS victims on behalf of the church.

Nzimbi, who spoke to a group of Christian and Muslim clergy during an AIDS workshop on Wednesday, apologized for the Church likening AIDS to “a disease for sinners and a curse from God” and said the Church would work to end the stigma associated with the pandemic.

“Anglican Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi on Wednesday made one of the bravest speeches by any religious leader in recent times,” the Nairobi Daily Nation wrote in an editorial Thursday.

“An admission like that of the head of Kenya's second biggest church will go a long way to fighting stigma – the real curse because it leads to shame, denial and despair,” it added.

The publication urged the church to continue forcefully speaking out against stigma.

Ugandan clergyman Gideon Byamugisha, who has lived for 19 years with HIV, said Nzimi’s apology was welcome.

"It's better to be long overdue than never," he told the BBC's Focus on Africa program.

According to The Nation, when the pandemic broke out in the mid-1980s, it was among “people whom every religion considers to be sinners – homosexuals and drug addicts.”

A BBC correspondent in Kenya noted “lots of church discrimination against those with HIV” with some having been excommunicated.

“The situation did not change much even when it broke out among heterosexuals,” The Nation added. “As a result, it is not strange that, to this day, HIV/AIDS is still associated with sexual promiscuity, even though it now afflicts family men and women, the low and the mighty, the young and the old - without any discrimination whatsoever.”

Nzimbi on Wednesday acknowledged that the Church’s earlier approach in fighting AIDS was “misplaced.”

"We apologize for earlier abandoning our flock, which was as a result of our ignorance of the disease," the archbishop said, according to The Nation.

“But today we are more informed,” he added.

Last year, in June, Nzimbi noted that faith groups had not given the support needed to people living with AIDS, leaving them isolated, helpless and hopeless.

"We need to wake up to meet the needs and challenges of the pandemic," Ecumenical News International reported him as saying.

The archbishop has urged governments to make life-prolonging drugs affordable, implement policies that recognized persons with AIDS, and to use HIV/AIDS prevention funds for that purpose.