By Rita McInerney

“May I give you a hug?” the teenager asked the man with AIDS.

She had just confessed before a roomful of people at St. Lawrence parish in Lawrenceville that she had been afraid to come to the meeting. She was scared of being in the same room with someone with AIDS.

Listening to his 10-minute presentation, she told George Kish, had eased her fears. They hugged.

Kish is a member of the education committee of the Archdiocesan AIDS Task Force. He is one of six people who travel as a team around the archdiocese, speaking to adults and youth in parish settings about the disease and the agony and isolation it inflicts on persons with AIDS, families and friends.

Father Alan Dillmann, chaplain at Grady Hospital and parochial vicar at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in downtown Atlanta, is chairman of the 14-member task force organized in late 1987.

In the beginning, the priest said, a two-pronged approach of education and housing was considered to respond to the battle against AIDS. Housing was soon found to be too costly and the focus was placed on education.

Early in 1988, the six committee members went on the road, first giving their presentation to the priests at deanery meeting. Later, they began going to the parishes where they are heard by adult education and youth groups. They have given programs for the Archdiocesan Office of Religious Education, for classes at Emory and Georgia State Universities, for the faculty at Marist and St. Pius X High School and three Methodist Churches in metropolitan Atlanta.

Dr. Ed Rascoe, Atlanta psychiatrist who is on the committee keeps the records on presentations given. By the end of January, 1990, more than 2,000 people had heard the six.

The presenters give 10-minute talks during a 90-minute program. Questions are then invited. Father Dillmann deals with the pastoral aspect of ministering to persons with HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Dr. Rascoe talks about the medical consequences. Sister Mary Jane Herlik, OP, tells of the need for volunteers and how they can help. Dianne Connolly speaks of losing a family member to AIDS. George Kish gives the viewpoint of the person with AIDS. Steve Schmidt discusses the economic suffering which invariably accompanies AIDS.

The reception “on the whole has been very positive and the people very open,” Father Dillmann said.

A few weeks ago the committee presented the program to the youth group at St. Joseph’s parish in Marietta. Molly McCarthy, youth director, said the young people were especially touched by Mrs. Connolly and Kish for putting “a human face” on AIDS.

The young people, Mrs. McCarthy said, “have some homophobia they have to deal with.” Several wanted to know how they could help persons with AIDS (PWA). There was a lot of good feedback afterward. One youth is going to interview Sister Herlik for a school paper he plans to write.

Sister Herlik was pleased, also, at the receptiveness of the young audience, the good questions they asked. “We urge them to talk about AIDS with their friends and spread the information. That’s the only way we’re going to keep this deadly virus from spreading.”

Father Dillmann is encouraged that Archbishop Eugene A. Marino, SSJ, in his pastoral asked every pastor to designate someone in the parish to serve as AIDS ministry coordinator.

Since the six have been traveling around to the parishes they have become aware “there is a lot of suffering in silence.”

“People don’t know who to turn to. There is no one to share the pain. It can be very isolating. We hope to bridge that so no one will have to suffer alone,” Father Dillmann said.

“A lot of hands go up,” he finds when the audience is asked “How many of you know someone with AIDS?”

“We feel there are people in the parishes who have been exposed and are HIV-positive. It can be very devastating news. We try to educate people to the spectrum of the illness” and let them know there are support groups where they can share their fears.

With Georgia the fifth highest state in the nation in the number of AIDS cases, it’s important to have an identifiable person in the parishes “to reach out to people,” to listen and let them know what help is available.

A major focus of the task force, the priests said, will be to see that every parish “has an appropriate, sensitive person, a non-judgmental person,” to act as parish minister. Such a person must be able to reach out to anyone engulfed in the AIDS tragedy afflicting a family member or friend.

The task force will work with the parish coordinators, channeling them to resources that help people cope with AIDS, to training programs for buddy volunteers or Meals on Wheels and other opportunities to help people acquire hands-on experience.

Another avenue for volunteers is Tuesday Night at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, a singular success since the dinners for person with AIDS were begun by the pastor, Father John Adamski, in November, 1988.

Parish groups preparing and serving the dinners will have a “relaxed contact” with persons with AIDS. Each person will have a face and a name and won’t remain “someone out there,” Father Dillmann said. The volunteers will be able to experience the “human dimension in a social, supportive atmosphere.”

In a friendly setting of candlelight, fresh flowers and cloth-covered tables, Tuesday Night offers delicious food prepared by volunteers, fellowship and relaxation. Many of the guests come from lonely apartments where the only people they see are medical personnel who come in to treat them.

The Shrine dinners are a night out with friends for persons with AIDS unable to work and financially strapped by horrendous medical costs of illness. It is a “strictly social gathering” financed by contributions which welcomes anywhere from 150 to 180 people each Tuesday night.

“We don’t in any way proselytize,” Father Dillmann said. “But they (dinners) have been a tremendous witness. They have opened doors and reduced a lot of hostility by the very fact that they identify with the church.”

And this association has been deepened on another level. The beautiful Shrine church has become important for many AIDS. It is where they come to say goodbye to their dead. “I have lost track of the number of funerals or memorial serviced held here.” For many of the dinner guests “we’ve become the church,” Father Dillmann said.

Father Dillmann is instructing one PWA in the faith at present. Last spring, in the chapel at Grady, he confirmed and received into the church a dying AIDS patient. That occasion was the second time a person with AIDS had entered the church through his guidance.

Father Dillmann said he stumbled into his AIDS ministry “indirectly by chance” in 1985 while pastor at Holy Spirit Church in Atlanta. He ministered to the sick at West Paces Ferry Hospital and suddenly was confronted with four AIDS patients at one time.

“AIDS at the time was Rock Hudson,” he said of the scant knowledge of the disease that had just begun to cast its pall across the country.

He was assigned to the Shrine and Grady Hospital in 1987. Since then he has ministered to an ever-increasing number of persons with AIDS and understands the urgent need for educating as many people as possible as to its nature and prevention.

He is hopeful people will be able to “respond compassionately, with understanding,” to the pastoral issued by Archbishop Marino.

There is a “lot of misunderstanding and myth still floating around,” he said. The more people can be reached through education, the more they will be able to come to grips with PWAs, overcome their own homophobia and judgmental attitudes on gays and drug users.”

“We have to continue to focus on the battle.”