By Piason Maringwa
Religion is one of the most respected areas in Zimbabwe and the world over and a religious leader is expected to be free from all blame and be upright in everything he/she does be it in church or outside.
In some denominations religious leaders such as Priests and Brothers/Sisters take vows never to be married or engage in sexual relationships throughout their lives. Religious Leaders and congregants of other denominations that allow marriages are not allowed to engage in extra marital affairs. This therefore means that these people are not expected to be infected by HIV unless they were born HIV positive.
Human beings being humane and sexual intercourse being sex, cases have been recorded of Priests, Pastors and other very religious people having been and others dying of HIV/AIDs. These religious people have been infected during their time as Priests, Pastors, Bishops or Prophets. As I write this article there are a lot of religious leaders who are struggling with HIV and some are really sick from AIDS while others are dying and most not because of HIV they were born with but that which they acquired while in active church business.
Sex is the major highway to HIV/AIDS and very few people have got the discipline and power to control themselves from the tempting and compulsive force sex wields over living beings. Some churches of today are sexual crime scenes and prisons in Zimbabwe and the world over have got their fare share of very high ranking church leaders as prisoners mostly of a sexual nature.
The fact that these Religious Church Leaders have been caught in sexual crimes makes it safe for me to conclude that we have quite a number of these in our HIV ranks. This realization makes it imperative for awareness programs to be taken to these leaders’ door steps so that they also learn like everyone else how to deal with HIV issues at a personal level.
Everyone will agree with me that it’ll be very difficult for priests, bishops, prophets or pastors to stand up and disclose to his/her congregants that he or she is HIV positive. People will judge him and doubt his seriousness in God’s work. They will have lots of unanswered questions about him and his work .The only way for religious people to deal with their HIV is by acting responsibly in their day to day dealings with their congregants.
Big problem with most church leaders is they rarely want to preach about HIV/AIDS in their churches as if they think it doesn’t exist. If they preached about it, it would be easy for them to deal with their own whenever they get it.
Religious Church Leaders are supposed to be sources of protection and advice for their congregants especially the ladies both young and middle aged.
They are supposed to offer guidance and counselling services to these people. Church leaders are also very much exposed to temptation especially from ladies. Some ladies come to church not only to pray but to put the Man of God to temptation as they believe that they are always financially loaded. To make matters worse a lot of churches these days deploy very vulnerable and young men to go and minister over elderly and skilled ladies in the art of seduction who end up infecting some of them with HIV.
I have always questioned whether these churches are aware that they have really hardcore prostitutes as members. Today’s lady has perfected the art of seduction to a point where one would safely say even the Biblical strongmen would have fallen if current trends are anything to go by .
Meanwhile, priests, brothers and sisters have also been known to die of AIDS and some are even currently suffering from HIV related ailments which they acquired while they were in active God’s work. Some have left the priesthood in shame after being caught on the wrong side, married or impregnated. This reminds me of a priest friend who posted on his status after he had just impregnated a lady teacher at a mission school he was Priest in Charge. “It’s better to be a happy 😈 Devil than be an unhappy Angel” unfortunately this former priest friend later died of AIDS.
HIV awareness programs should be spread to all people irrespective of who they are and what their position in society is. I like the way Covid-19 worked. Those people who enforced the wearing of masks even at times beating offenders and arresting others were the most hard hit and died more than the ordinary folk who wore masks not to protect themselves from COVID-19 but from arrest and beating. God has a way of protecting the poor and vulnerable ordinary folk. Nobody arrested people to enforce use of condoms but evidence taken from how fast condoms displayed in public places disappear is enough testimony of condom use. Those who deal with prostitutes will tell you that a real prostitute will not sleep with a man without a condom even if that man is a priest, pastor or offers a thousand dollars just for a single deep. I think there was never any reason why anybody should have been beaten to wear a mask during the Covid era.
The reason why religious leaders and other religious people are quickly infected with HIV is because most times they are seduced by either young ladies among some who were born HIV positive or infected married women who shun protected sex because it makes the whole sexual act appear like prostitution which it actually is after all, but they want to sanitize it as something more innocent. Religious Leaders are in a very precarious position because they can’t do a lot of funny things which us ordinary folk can easily do. For example they can’t move around in public with a prostitute or go to a medical facility to be treated for an STI neither can they go for an HIV test in their own neighborhood without raising eyebrows. Someone once told me that falling in love with a priest is like falling in love with a ghost or a goblin because you don’t want to be seen with him yet the main attraction of any relationship is walking around with your guy.
My advice to religious leaders and other so religious people is “You’re human like everyone else therefore face reality and act like any other human, accepting all the realities that other human beings face including HIV/AIDs even if it was not brought home by you personally just do all the requirements recommended by medical personnel and live with HIV like everyone else after all the world is a stage and we are all acting our parts.
By Piason Maringwa
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