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On 20 July, faith communities from 70 different groups across the world gathered online and in-person in Washington, DC to express solidarity for the billions of people without access to COVID-19 vaccines.

In an ecumenical meeting for North American church leaders on 24 June, prayers and discussion centered on issues that are both deeply painful and seemingly insurmountable: racism, division, vaccine hesitancy, genocide, war. But hope found a way into the virtual gathering as participants supported each other to find ways forward.

As a United Nations high-level meeting convenes from 8-10 June in New York, the World Council of Churches (WCC) is joining the UN and other faith-based and civic groups to review progress on commitments to end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.

As religious leaders in the USA gathered online for a Faiths4Vaccines National Summit on 26 May, they heard a clear message from policymakers and scientists leading the COVID-19 response: churches are not only caring for people’s health but for their souls, too.

A Faiths4Vaccines National Summit will be held on 26 May, featuring US medical professionals—including US surgeon general Vivek Murthy—as well as faith leaders who have been serving critical roles in their communities to support equitable vaccine distribution in the USA.

Among the massive social dislocations caused by the coronavirus pandemic, perhaps none is as plaintive as those to churches. Around the world, church gatherings, liturgies, fellowship, and service projects have been canceled or postponed or migrated online, precisely when Christian communities and those who rely on them need them most.

Rabbi Mark Dratch is the executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America. Below, he reflects on what has inspired him amid the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how we can work together to create a redeemed world.

The National Council of Churches (USA) has joined with other humanitarian and human rights organizations in writing the US Congress to urge that obstacles keeping nongovernmental organizations from addressing the “devastating potential for COVID-19’s spread” within the nation of North Korea be removed.

Bishop Staccato Powell is president of the board of bishops of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a founding member church of the World Council of Churches (WCC). His long service with the WCC includes attending four assemblies and serving on many governing bodies, including the current Central Committee.

The World Association for Christian Communication is creating a rapid response fund to help support grassroots community media outlets that provide accurate, trusted coronavirus-related information to vulnerable people who often cannot access mainstream media. Individuals and organisations are encouraged to contribute to the fund.

Ten years ago, while studying to become a nurse, Khadijah Abdullah was confronted at a hospital with a rather difficult patient, a Muslim living with AIDS who was also coping with several other medical issues. When Abdullah realized how isolated and stigmatized this patient was in his own faith community, she became aware of her prejudices and ignorance and she decided to do something about it.

“I see this approach of ‘a healthy church’ as a setting that will hopefully go global,” says Dr Suzanne Jackson of the University of Toronto, who directs the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Health Promotion.

Faith leaders and health service providers from across the globe gathered on 27 September for an interfaith prayer breakfast, to join their voices and commit their action to combat the spread of HIV and TB in children.

A new “toolkit” to empower and enable churches to promote better health in their congregations is in the making. A workshop held 17 – 19 July 2018 in North Carolina, USA, by the WCC prepared the ground for this new resource.

“She is HIV positive too. No need to inherit her late husband’s title deed. She will die soon and leave it anyway.”

These man’s thoughts during his brother’s funeral were used by Jane Ng’ang’a, national coordinator, International Network of Religious Leaders Living with or Personally Affected by HIV (INERELA+) Kenya Chapter, to push the debate on property and inheritance rights linked to HIV. The discussion was held during the 61st Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), on 16 March, at the headquarters of UNAIDS, in New York.

“Dignity, Freedom, and Grace: Christian Perspectives on HIV, AIDS and Human Rights,” a book published earlier this year by the WCC, will be among reports discussed at a 20 September event with the theme “Keeping the Faith in Development: Gender, Religions & Heath.”

Thirty-five years into the response to HIV and AIDS, it remains a disease that not only thrives on, but exploits the lines of exclusion and inequality in society. In the Philippines, where there has been an alarming increase in people testing positive for HIV, the country’s National Council of Churches recognized that more than words were needed. While dialogue and debate were important, they needed to translate into action, given the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in Filipino society, and a faith-based and societal milieu still dominated by a sex-negative theology.

Churches are engaged at the grassroots level throughout the world in the response to HIV and AIDS, but the struggle against the disease and those stigmatized for being HIV positive needs to continue, say church leaders.

As a United Nations high-level meeting on ending AIDS led to the adoption of a new political declaration to fast-track progress toward combating HIV and AIDS, the faith community responded, both with words of commendation and a call for changes.