I remember the reports that circulated after the death of New York’s John Cardinal O’Connor: though few people knew about it, he had spent many nights at a local AIDS ward, anonymously, bathing the sick and emptying their bedpans. No one ever knew. It was just something he did, as an act of faith and charity. He was also responsible for opening AIDS wards in Catholic hospitals at a time when the disease was considered a terrifying plague among the city’s large gay population.

Like the cardinal’s work, the Church’s ministry to AIDS victims has gone largely unnoticed. But that may be changing.

With a growing number of Hispanics — and Catholics — contracting HIV, the Church has raised its profile in reaching out to the disease’s victims.

The Chicago Tribune has some examples:

A day after her 11-year-old daughter first asked about AIDS, Irma Flores listened to a 37-minute tutorial on the pandemic in an increasingly common venue: the Catholic Church.

Flores joined more than six dozen other parishioners Sunday at Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel in Des Plaines for the inaugural showing of a Spanish-language film designed to educate people about HIV/AIDS, explain the symptoms and inspire what Rev. Claudio Diaz Jr. called a spiritual response to the disease.

“As Catholics, as Christians, what do you do? You don’t close doors,” said Diaz, director of Hispanic ministries for the archdiocese of Chicago.

Produced by the archdiocese and Catholic Charities, the DVD is tailored to Hispanic Catholics, a population increasingly at risk of HIV infections.

Hispanics represent 14 percent of the U.S. population but account for 19 percent of all AIDS cases diagnosed in 2005, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was the second highest rate of infection among any ethnicity nationwide, though the CDC does not explain the cause.

The DVD is among the first nationwide to address HIV/AIDS education for Spanish-speaking Catholics, organizers said.

Copies of the DVD and Spanish-language handouts detailing infection rates among women, adolescents and minority groups will be distributed to 148 parishes that serve large Hispanic populations. The Chicago archdiocese, the nation’s third largest, has 2.3 million Catholics. Of those, an estimated 938,000, or 40 percent, are Latinos.

An English version produced two years ago was distributed to all parishes. Patricia Drott, Catholic Charities’ HIV/AIDS liaison to the Chicago archdiocese, said the region’s burgeoning Spanish-speaking population and the high incidence of HIV infections among Hispanics warranted a Spanish version of the film.

About 80 of the 750 people who gathered for mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe attended the forum that Rev. Miguel Martinez had spent a month promoting. Martinez said many congregants shied away from the topic often clouded by stigma.

“It’s like a taboo in our culture,” Martinez said. “As a church, this is a great opportunity as we deal with people every week to break that barrier in dealing with a subject that is sometimes fearful for the community.”

The film showed a Chicago physician who works with HIV patients, and a Latina mother who contracted HIV from her husband. Diaz urged Catholics to stay informed, help those suffering with HIV/AIDS and suspend judgment of those who have the disease. By exploring the medical, spiritual and cultural aspects of the disease, organizers said they hoped to make what may have been a traditionally uncomfortable topic more accessible.

“We’re learning now that we really have to be looking at HIV in its social context,” said Ray Sousa, a chaplain with Access Community Health Network and a member of the Chicago archdiocese AIDS task force. “We can’t treat people as symptoms.”

Among other things, this is a welcome reminder of how active and energetic the Church has been in treating and caring for some of today’s modern outcasts.