In the fifth episode of "Plague," Mike visits the small Midwestern city of Belleville, Illinois, where a Catholic Sister broke ground in the 1980s by opening an organization to provide services for people living with HIV and AIDS.

Learn more at www.americamag.org/plague.

The story of Catholics and the AIDS epidemic in the United States is often told as one of “gays versus the church.” But the reality was much more complicated.

Federal spending on children fell to 1.9 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product in 2018.

“Plague: Untold Stories of AIDS and the Catholic Church,” an ambitious podcast created and hosted by America’s national correspondent, Michael J. O’Loughlin, premiers Dec. 1.

“The marginalization painfully experienced by millions of persons cannot go on for long," wrote Francis.