Episcopal Church leaders have welcomed the Primate of Kenya’s March 15 statement on HIV/AIDS, saying it was a step forward in the listening process recommended by the 1998 Lambeth Conference and affirmed by Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold in his February letter to the primates.

In a speech to Muslim and Christian clergy living with HIV/AIDS, Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi apologized for the Church’s shunning them and tacitly encouraging their stigmatization.

“As a church, our earlier approach in fighting AIDS was misplaced since we likened it to a disease for sinners and a curse from God,” he told a gathering of the Africa Network of Religious Leaders Living with and Personally Affected by HIV and AIDS. “We apologize for earlier abandoning our flock, which was as a result of our ignorance of the disease, but today we are more informed.”

The Rt. Rev. William E. Swing, Bishop of California, said a caring response to those suffering from AIDS is an evolutionary thing.

“Some Christians early on get it; some Christians later on get it,” he said. “I rejoice in the large words of Archbishop Nizimbi. What a privilige is to be doing AIDS ministry with him now.”

The Rt. Rev. C. Christopher Epting, deputy for ecumenical and interfaith affairs at the Episcopal Church Center, said the Kenyan Primate’s remarks were “certainly to be welcomed” and were “in line with [Bishop Griswold’s] recent statement on the listening process.”

More work remained to be done, Bishop Epting noted, saying the “the listening process itself was envisioned to hear the voices of women, of gays and lesbians, and others directly. This has, in large part, not happened.”

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