http://cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/AIDS/01/31/aids.priests/index.html
Report: Priests hit hard by hidden AIDS epidemic.
January 31, 2000
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- Roman Catholic priests in the
United States are dying from AIDS-related illnesses at a rate
four times higher than the general population and the cause is
often concealed on their death certificates, The Kansas City Star
reported in a series of stories that started Sunday.
In the first of a three-part series, the newspaper said death
certificates and interviews with experts indicated several
hundred priests have died of AIDS-related illnesses since the
mid-1980s and hundreds more are living with HIV, the virus that
causes the disease.
"I think this speaks to a failure on the part of the church,"
said Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Archdiocese of
Detroit. "Gay priests and heterosexual priests didn't know how to
handle their sexuality, their sexual drive. And so they would
handle it in ways that were not healthy."
The Star received 801 responses to questionnaires that were sent
last fall to 3,000 of the 46,000 priests in the United States.
The margin of error of the survey was 3.5 percentage points.
Six of 10 priests responding said they knew of at least one
priest who had died of an AIDS-related illness, and one-third
knew a priest living with AIDS. Three-fourths said the church
needed to provide more education to seminarians on sexual issues.
"How to be celibate and to be gay at the same time, and how to be
celibate and heterosexual at the same time, that's what we were
never really taught how to do. And that was a major failing,"
Gumbleton said.
Asked about their sexual orientation, 75 percent said they were
heterosexual, 15 percent said they were homosexual, and 5 percent
said they were bisexual.
The Rev. John Keenan, who runs Trinity House, an outpatient
clinic in Chicago for priests, said he believes most priests with
AIDS contracted the disease through same-sex relations. He said
he treated one priest who had infected eight other priests.
The Star said precise numbers of priests who have died of AIDS or
become infected with HIV is unknown, partly because many suffer
in solitude. When priests tell their superiors, the cases
generally are handled quietly.
The newspaper cited the case of Bishop Emerson Moore, who left
the Archdiocese of New York in 1995 and went to Minnesota, where
he died in a hospice of an AIDS-related illness. His death
certificate attributed the death to "unknown natural causes" and
listed his occupation as "laborer" in the manufacturing industry.
After an AIDS activist filed a complaint, officials changed the
cause of death to "HIV-related illness," the Star said, but the
occupation was not corrected.
The newspaper said the death rate among priests from AIDS appears
to be at least four times that of the rate for the general U.S.
population.
Some priests and behavioral experts believe the church has scared
priests into silence by treating homosexual acts as an
abomination and the breaking of celibacy vows as shameful, the
Star said.
Catholic cardinals in the United States and high-ranking church
officials in the Vatican declined requests to discuss the
newspaper's findings, The Star reported. The Vatican referred
questions to local bishops.
Bishop Raymond Boland of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph
said the AIDS deaths show that priests are human.
"Much as we would regret it, it shows that human nature is human
nature," he said. "And all of us are heirs to all of the
misfortunes that can be foisted upon the human race."
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