Many people of good will like yourselves feel very frustrated nowadays – terrorism, climate change, the financial crisis, globalisation, swine flu, and AIDS — all feed into a sense that there is something badly in need of change. My impression, too, is that many people in the developed countries are aware of this and more and more inclined to do something about it. If we need to change the way we travel and work and obtain our energy, then so be it, A lot of us suspect that life could be better qualitatively if we could respond creatively to the challenges and adopt lifestyles that are simpler, more connected to others, less centred on “me” and my immediate appetites. BUT how we might get there? Common vision is missing, and the way there. We Christians seem to lack the confidence to put forward our own ideas and proposals, and as a result we stagger on, hoping that someone else will somehow sort things out. This leads to a typical heavy sense of discouragement and paralysis. As if the real questions are too big to ask; as if our civilization lacks the resources to face its issues – many of them quite obviously of its own making.
What I want to do today is to explain to you why I think some of the resources we so badly need are beginning to come into view. I want to show you that, as alumni of Jesuit schools, you are well-placed to avail yourself of them. And I want to invite you to join in the Jesuit effort to make a difference, a real difference in one of the crucial struggles of our time.

A READING of AIDS
A personal introduction. Would I have been surprised as a young Jesuit to find myself working on AIDS in Africa? Certainly! Back in the 1960s and 1970s, I was fired by the mission of the Society to promote justice –I did interdisciplinary studies in social thought, got involved in the social apostolate, worked in Canada until 1989, in El Salvador 1990-1991, and finally in Rome until 2002.
Now I find myself working on an issue of public health which many see as controversial. But if we learn to see AIDS properly, I am sure we will find the way. This is what I want to share with you.
According to UNAIDS [UNAIDS, Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, 2008], in 2007 about 22 million in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV. This makes up 67 percent of the world’s HIV-positive people. Of recorded AIDS-related deaths in 2007, three-quarters occurred in sub-Saharan Africa. But the alarming statistics over-simplify; AIDS is a highly complex phenomenon – how should we best address it?

RESPONSE of the CHURCH
In the old days, we used to separate personal morality from social ethics, individual identity from family life. Now, after 7 years working in Africa, I realise that health, morality, justice, culture, reason and faith are intimately related. None of them makes sense without the others and without a guiding vision which comes from God and strains towards Him.
What I am saying only about AIDS, is what Benedict XVI is telling us in his great encyclical, Caritas in Veritate [Caritas in Veritate is easy to download from www.vatican.va -- choose "Holy See", then "Benedict XVI" and then "Encyclicals"; or get it at your Catholic bookstore]. He shows us to think clearly about (our) society and (our) economy. He shows us how to put order into our thinking, keeping things in their proper places. Social science seeks the facts and the trends, social policy implements governmental decisions about what to do, but only WE (believing and thinking people) can weigh up the pros and the cons, only WE can opt for the basic values and work for what is best under God for the whole human family. He says, “Stop separating development from the whole Man.” You cannot let the economy find its own ethics, separate from Man. You cannot let biotechnology find its own ethics, separate from Man. You cannot let sexuality find its own ethics, separate from Man. First and finally, you cannot separate the creature Man from the creator God. This is not a new ideology, but rather recovering the indispensable points of reference – God our Creator, the whole Man, the human family – without which we will certainly continue getting more and more lost.
This teaching doesn’t simplify matters or offer easy solutions! But it is thoroughly inspiring. It says what we desperately need to hear – a vision and a method which integrates and humanises us. This is what I learn from working on AIDS in Africa, which requires well-focused action at many levels and in many different ways.
So if AIDS is the greatest threat to Africa since the slave trade, let us face it as a whole (not in a few parts which suit us) and with a radically human morality (not ad hoc and self-interested measures). We cannot face AIDS in Africa only as a medical crisis (more medications and only medications), or as a question of reproductive technology (condoms), or as something shameful (moralising).
A narrow or superficial picture misses the real nature of what is going on and, in so doing, makes matters worse. Here is what Pope Benedict rightly said will help to overcome AIDS [In English, click on http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20090325_1.htm]:

1. Firstly, bring out the human dimension of sexuality, that is to say a spiritual and human renewal that would bring with it a new way of behaving towards others … Our effort is to renew humanity inwardly, to give spiritual and human strength for proper conduct towards our bodies and those of others.
2. Secondly, true friendship above all for those who are suffering, a willingness to make sacrifices and to practise self-denial, to be alongside the suffering … This capacity to suffer with those who are suffering, to remain present in situations of trial.

Trying to help people in Africa who are at risk of HIV or suffering from AIDS, I have learned about the integrity and the responsibility which seem missing in our fragmented world and which are essential if we want to live, not as neighbours in a global slum, but as brothers and sisters in a human family.
So I have learned that the AIDS mission of the church is a mission of 100 years. We’re in the first years of a situation that’s going to take a century to deal with. It’s not like a tsunami, a sudden disaster that has to be met immediately. In terms of deaths in Africa, we have a tsunami every six weeks. But if this really is a 100-year mission, then it’s a kairos, a providential chance for the church to learn what it means to be church, and for us to learn what Christ left us to do here.

The Constraints:

1. We learn as we go along that AIDS is very complex. HIV is a virus that reduces and destroys the immune system. But it’s also a cultural, familial, communal and spiritual reality. The fight against AIDS has to be carried forward on all those fronts.
2. The statistics can be very discouraging and superficial.
3. The financial resources are often out of our reach.
4. The extraordinary challenge of prevention is linked with education and formation – are the Jesuit schools and universities equipping our graduates to remain HIV-free?

AIDS is a disease of poverty and of hopelessness, of conflict, of suffering, of all the things that happen because we are countries that cannot produce, cannot export, cannot run ourselves well, are often at war and full of refugees, full of corruption. Africa’s woes are complicating factors when it comes to AIDS. Not by chance, it is the same for the other big challenges which we are talking about at this Conference: good governance, transparency, peace, social justice and ecology. Without a strong ethics, both private or personal and public and cultural, we are lost.

AJAN: A JESUIT CONTRIBUTION
Integral human development is the brave vision. What part do Jesuits – and perhaps their alumni? – have to play?
In June 2002, the Jesuit Major Superiors of Africa and Madagascar (JESAM) accepted AIDS as a key common priority and set up the Assistancy-wide African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN). Since then I have had the good fortune to coordinate AJAN, and I am happy to share these seven years of experience with you.
AJAN’s mission is to help Jesuits in sub-Saharan Africa – their works and communities, individually and with their colleagues – to respond to HIV and AIDS in an effective, coordinated and evangelical manner, culturally sensitive and spiritually grounded.

1. Effective : In each country, visiting Jesuits and their works in each country, appreciating what Jesuits are doing and making these efforts known, strengthening initiatives already underway, and helping potential projects get off the ground. Former Father General Peter-Hans Kolvenbach: The African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN) has been able to strengthen and co-ordinate the efforts of many individuals, give respectability to the Church’s involvement in resisting the pandemic spread of AIDS and, above all, accompany with dignity many of those suffering from its effects (January 2007).
2. Coordinated in mutual encouragement and support, working not individualistically but as a body. How are all these Jesuit AIDS ministries connected and sustained? First and foremost by communications, which is AJAN’s nervous system and its blood supply too. With Jesuits scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, communications are vital capillary and nervous systems which help bind us into one body. Over the years AJAN encourages those involved and links them together step-by-step in an active continental Jesuit network with its own voice and capacity to act and advocate in coordination.
3. Evangelical The paradigm for healing is Jesus touching the leper. First he said, Of course I want to heal you; then he reached out and touched him. For me, that is God in the time of AIDS. He really wants to heal and reaches out to touch. Healing is to be touched, therefore to be treated humanly, to be included and able to feel that you’re okay. We are God’s way of reaching and touching. He cannot do it without us. Father General Adolfo Nicolás: The spread of AIDS is a terrible and worrying fact. Through the African Jesuit AIDS Network, the African Assistancy is doing remarkable efforts to help victims of this scourge and, even more important, to educate people in proper moral conduct (September 2008)
4. Culturally sensitive: Globalized culture is obviously imposing itself on Africa with irresistible force: consumerism, obviously, nudity and titillation in advertising, the practice of recreational sex. Nevertheless, HIV and AIDS is so personal that it demands enormous respect for local customs and traditional values. The Society of Jesus, functioning in nearly 30 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, naturally tends to include the required inculturation.
5. Spiritually grounded: We are finding Ignatian spirituality to be the best means of deepening and sustaining the Jesuit AIDS ministry integrating it deeply into various Jesuit works. With a shared understanding of spirituality as it relates to HIV, AIDS and suffering, this will serve as a backbone for the structures we’re building to address the pandemic. We see the Spiritual Exercises as a school of prayer for those infected or affected by AIDS and for those who care for them. We are thinking of formation of moral conscience and discernment in making difficult choices according to Gospel and Church teaching.

We in the church, who are so close to people, are in a very good position to deal with these things, by inclusion, by support groups, by home visits, by preaching and spiritual accompaniment, and just by including AIDS in a non-judgemental way in the life of our community. One thing that never gets told are the thousands of miracle stories that have happened since AIDS began, the thousands of times that God has acted through people, and people have healed and helped people.

Let me tell you the most extraordinary story. This guy had worked somewhere in the city and came back to his village and raped this girl and gave her HIV Soon enough the disease started to act on him. He got sick, and the people all turned on him. The only one who would care for him was that girl, and she cared for him until he died. There are many stories like that of healing and forgiveness and reconciliation.

AIDS is kairos, a moment of truth that involves judgment and grace and opportunity: The time has come. A moment of truth has arrived. In a very mysterious way, the pandemic gives a chance to live the Gospel and to be church in ways that otherwise maybe we wouldn’t have.

WHAT CAN WE DO?
Much work is already being done in nearly 30 sub-Saharan countries across Africa. Coordinated and supported by AJAN, Jesuits are providing leadership in communities, schools and universities, in parishes and families: integral support and pastoral care; education for orphans; advocacy for real universal access to treatment; value-based education as a solid basis for prevention; social, cultural and theological research.

Many thanks to the alumni of the Lycée Saint Joseph (Avignon) who never miss a chance to make AJAN’s work known, and who assure us that the financial support which they offer us each year will continue.

Many thanks to the World Association Pedro Arrupe, for their generous aid offered for a Jesuit AIDS programme in Africa, stipulating that it be for youth and/or directly for orphans or other young victims of AIDS.

Now we Jesuits are called

• to reach out to the most vulnerable and forgotten with charity: Treatment, good nutrition, pastoral care and support
• to reach out with charity to the most vulnerable and forgotten

For example here in Bujumbura, the Service Yezu Mwiza (The Good Jesus Service) exists for the communities which have suffered much during the years of war, and now to serve all without distinction. The programme functions in two parishes in the city slums and eight rural ones in the abandoned and inaccessible hills surrounding Bujumbura. SYM is called to reach out beyond the frontiers to others in need as Jesus did, by sharing their life. “Frontier” means to go where other organisations do not.

• to improve the responses to HIV and AIDS in Africa in coverage, quality and depth
• to educate in every way so that Africa is ever better equipped to overcome AIDS
• to assure leadership of vision, innovation, action
• to bring faith, life and hope.

Would you like to get involved in the same undertaking, the same mission ?

Setting up AJAN in 2002, JESAM clearly made the pandemic an urgent priority for the Society of Jesus in Africa, in the firm belief that Jesuits have a unique contribution to bring to the struggle against HIV and AIDS. AJAN is a highly flexible response and, like all our major ministries, the commitment is long-term. Even when interest shifts and resources dry up, the Society of Jesus is committed to facing AIDS until it is no more.

Michael Czerny, S.J.
African Jesuit AIDS Network

7thCongress of the World Union of Jesuit Alumni (22-27 July 2009)
Bujumbura, 25 July 2009