VATICAN – Responding to the deaths of tens of thousands of children from AIDS and AIDS-related illnesses, the Vatican brought together physicians and representatives of drug companies and humanitarian agencies to strategize ways to improve care for children and adolescents who are HIV-positive.

AMSTERDAM – An initiative to identify and properly treat children living with HIV has gained new momentum as international organizations and pharmaceutical companies respond to a Vatican push to look past profit to doing the right thing.

AMSTERDAM – Despite rumors of its demise, the AIDS pandemic is far from over, and churches must continue to play a critical role in combating the disease, Catholic leaders were told at an international gathering of more than 15,000 AIDS researchers and activists.

When I started out on the Church on the Street, I gave little thought to some of the logistics of such a ministry apart from determining that it would be 8 p.m. onwards every Thursday evening.

In the wake of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations, I have been reflecting on how the Canadian Catholic Church is perceived on the streets.

BHOPAL, India – A priest in the north Indian state of Rajasthan is fighting to end discrimination against children whose parents live with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

SANTIAGO, Chile – Fighting the scourge of discrimination that often accompanies HIV, the Santa Clara Foundation in Santiago de Chile has worked since 1994 to ensure that children with the virus experience God’s love and have a better quality of life.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Each week, 2,000 women ages 15-24 are infected with HIV in South Africa.

NAIROBI, Kenya – Some Kenyan churches are demanding premarital HIV testing before weddings, a trend activists warn is infringing on the rights of people living with HIV and AIDS.

DURBAN, South Africa – The face of the AIDS epidemic has changed dramatically in recent years as scientists have created antiretroviral drugs that lower levels of the virus in the bloodstream, allowing those infected with HIV to live relatively normal lives.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – One-third of HIV-positive children "die before their first birthday, and half before their second birthday," so Catholic groups are advocating for changes in treatment, said Msgr. Robert Vitillo, Caritas Internationalis special adviser on HIV and health.

Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Vatican's permanent observer to the United Nations, applauded recent progress made around the world to end the AIDS epidemic and warned against complacency on efforts to end the disease.

ACCRA, Ghana - As the Year of Mercy neared, the bishops of Africa and Madagascar held up the work of families and local faith communities in caring for people with AIDS as a strong example of unconditional love.

WASHINGTON - Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' overseas relief and development agency, called assertions that it had supplied birth control in Kenya "misleading, exaggerated and untrue."

CAPE TOWN, South Africa - With the highest levels of HIV prevalence globally, southern African countries have seen families torn apart by AIDS, with children left to raise younger siblings and sick children left in the care of elderly grandparents.