About Us

AIDS Open Letter Appeal to Australia's Catholic Bishops
Issued to Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Canberra; and also to Australian media - February, 20, 2004

We invite you Catholic Bishops of Australia to have a special gold coin collection taken up in all churches throughout Australia on this forthcoming Easter Sunday as a direct, material response to the Pope's 2004 Lenten message which highlights the horror of AIDS and in which he declares: " Humanity cannot close its eyes in the face of so appalling a tragedy."

We in Australian must make a significant material response: the tragedy is staining our own geographic doorstep just next door in Papua New Guinea. We have cried in the wilderness that Australia itself floats in a sea of HIV, but our voice is being lost in the inland ocean of disinterest and apathy. The Church can and needs to do so much more in terms of a material response.

We can only publicly appeal to you in this way because many in the Catholic media have been pressured by church authorities to ignore our existemnce and who now deny us editorial or advertising space because we wont support life threatening Vatican stances of condom use - especially among the infected. Our website is www.aids.net.au

A Catholic AIDS agency ourselves, based in Melbourne, we've been the practical face of Catholic AIDS care in Victoria for almost 20 years. But the Melbourne hierarchy has now turned its back on us and is limiting its HIV response to a part-time service at a virtually secret Melbourne address with an unpublicised telephone number. That's dropping the HIV bundle with a vengeance!

The former archbishop of Melbourne, the then Archbishop (and now Cardinal) George Pell, previously asked you Bishops years ago on our behalf to introduce an annual gold coin collection on the Sunday closest to World AIDS Day on December 1st., to help support those living with HIV/AIDS, but you declined, saying the Australian flock was already sufficiently burdened.

We now appeal to you to take up the Pope's own invitation and do something special this Easter Sunday.

Brian Haill,
President,
The Australian AIDS Fund Incorporated,
PO Box 1347, Frankston, Victoria, 3199
Email: bhaill@bigpond.net.au
Website: http://www.aids.net.au