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A seminar for the clergy who are engaged in taking pastoral care of HIV-infected inmates of penitentiaries was held on March 23-25, 2010, at the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate. It was organized by the Russia Round Table under the DECR and Synodal Department for Ministry in Prisons.

According to the Federal Methodological Center for Preventing and Combating AIDS, offenders constitute about 11% of all the officially registered HIV-infected people in Russia, that is, about 48 thousand, with many of them having tuberculosis and virus hepatitis.

Orthodox clergy visiting prisons and colonies have encountered the need to give spiritual and psychological support to HIV-infected inmates. The task of the seminar was to give the participants information about illnesses caused by the HIV and other socially dangerous diseases, such and tuberculosis and virus hepatitis and about the ways in which these diseases are spread. The specifics of spiritual and psychological aid to HIV-infected inmates of penitentiaries and the mental state of those who take hard the news about the incurable disease and the methods to help them were explained to the participants. The participant also considered ways of organizing volunteers in aid to prison priests.

There were 25 representatives from various diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church including those of Orel, Tambov, Nizhniy Novgorod, Krasnoyarsk, Pskov, Vologda, Orenburg, Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Tobolsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul, Bryansk, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Ryazan, Saratov, as well as Vitebsk and Minsk in Belarus. Among the participants were also leaders of diocesan departments for cooperation with law enforcement, as well as monastics and lay people who are engage in taking care of HIV-infected convicts.

All the participants pointed out that in their ministry they have encountered HIV-positive prisoners, and clergy need educational programs on infectious diseases including HIV infection, hepatises and tuberculosis and on narcology, psychological counselling, psychiatry and the problem of suicides. It is also important for prison clergy to establish exchanges of experience and coordination of work and interaction with the Federal Service of Penitentiaries and medical workers.

DECR Communication Service