This week, on Dec. 1, the world marks Aids Day to commemorate those who have died and are suffering from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and the HIV virus. Also in focus are the 14 million children orphaned by this disease.

On this World AIDS Day the Rainbow Sash Movement is calling on the Catholic Church to apologize to those communities affected by HIV/AIDS both locally, and internationally, for the Church’s slow and confused response to the AIDS pandemic. Are the bishops and the Pope sorry at all? They all sound so right, so self-righteous and yet, when it comes to their personal life, doing the right thing themselves, their silence is deafening!      

We challenge the Vatican's recently released Statement for World AIDS Day  by Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, "The Church has always defended women and their very great dignity with especial vigor and is struggling to fight those examples of discrimination which still today in a great deal of our society require greater efforts to secure the elimination of disparities in relation to women, including in the area of health." This statement is simply untrue, and is not in line with the actions of the Church around the issue of women.

There are some countries were women are endangered species. The female populations in certain countries are specially endangered due to their subordinate status as well as lack of education and economic stature. For instance, in sub–Saharan Africa, 57 percent of HIV victims are women. In Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa, women compose 77 percent of all young people infected by the virus.  

In Asia, there has been a 55 percent increase in the number of women who tested positive for the HIV virus. Even in Russia, the proportion of women infected jumped from 24% to 38% in just 12 months.  

In Africa, John Paul II has repeatedly refused to countenance the use of condoms, even when faced with the spread of HIV-AIDS, thus seemingly abandoning Africans, in their millions, to a lethal epidemic. Elsewhere, he continues his intransigent opposition to birth control of any kind, divorce, homosexuality, IVF treatment, and to married and women priests. Huge swathes of the Catholic community are in this way made to feel excluded. 

And Catholics who cannot meet the Pope’s exacting standards of sexual morality are withdrawing from the church in record numbers, turning a once-thriving community into a shrinking one.  

The ABC mantra favored by the United States National Council of Catholic Bishops — abstinence, be faithful and no condoms, is useless where women and girls have no power to say "no."  

We are asking newly elected President, Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Washington, and Vice President Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, IL, to call for a national day of atonement in the US Church for the communities impacted by HIV/AIDS. The Church must accept the responsibility it played in the spread of this disease. Delusional statements coming out of the Vatican will not solve the problem. Only when the Pope and Bishops behavior is consistent with the two great commandments, love of God, and love of neighbor, can the Church regain any moral authority to speak to these communities. We call on our Bishops to be silent no more on this World AIDS Day.

Rainbow Sash Movement