Quick Facts
UNAIDS estimates that 33.2 million people globally are living with HIV. This number includes an estimated 2.5 million children under the age of 15 years.
The number of people receiving antiretroviral therapy in low- and middle-income countries has increased tenfold since the end of 2001, almost to 3 million. However, only 31 percent of people in need of treatment are currently receiving it.
Worldwide the Catholic Church provides care for one out of every four people living with HIV. (Source: Caritas Internationalis)
Catholic Relief Services began supporting its first HIV project in Bangkok, Thailand in 1986. In 2007, we directly served more than 4 million people.
Through the AIDSRelief Project, CRS helps provide lifesaving antiretroviral therapy to more than 132,000 people living with HIV in nine countries; more than 100,000 are children. An additional 216,000 people who do not yet require medication are receiving other kinds of care.
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World AIDS Day: Let us pray...
We bring our prayers before a God who knows our prayers
before we pray them, who in listening to our intercessions
helps us to acknowledge the desires of our own hearts.
Bless us with compassionate hearts!
God of compassion, many step away from people with HIV
out of ignorance, or fear or denial.
Help us to step toward our brothers and sisters who have HIV,
those who are an ocean away
and those on the sidewalks down which we walk.
Help us stand in solidarity with their suffering,
in recognition of their worth.
We pray…
Bless us with compassionate hearts!
God of the poor,
AIDS does not discriminate by race or religion or economic class.
But people do.
Help us to respond to the cry of the poor
for HIV medications and health care,
for food, for education, for communities of support.
We pray…
Bless us with compassionate hearts!
God of the orphan, there are villages in Africa
where all of the adults have died of AIDS;
only their children remain.
Help us to create a global village that will raise these children
in love and hope into a secure future.
We pray…
Bless us with compassionate hearts!
God of justice,
our nation has the power to fund a large percentage of the efforts
that will slow the spread of global HIV.
Strengthen our call for a U.S. response
that is wise and immediate and generous.
We pray…
Bless us with compassionate hearts!
God of our inmost hurts and heartbreaks,
AIDS reaches us where we live.
Be with us as we call to mind the people we have loved,
known or encountered
who are living with or who have died from AIDS...
We pray…
Bless us with compassionate hearts!
We have brought our prayers for healing and compassion before God.
Let us go forth as compassionate healers into a world
that awaits the full Reign of God.
We pray this in Jesus’ name….
Amen.
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