Angelo D’Agostino, 80, Led AIDS Orphanage
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Angelo D’Agostino, an American priest who opened one of the first orphanages for HIV-positive children in Kenya and fought to make AIDS drugs affordable to the poor, died yesterday in Nairobi of a heart attack. He was 80.
D’Agostino known at the orphanage as “Father D’Ag,” opened it with just three HIV-positive children. “They were babies, abandoned in hospital,” Owens said. “It was a day of tremendous joy when we finally welcomed the first three children.”
A native of Providence, Rhode Island, D’Agostino spent two years as a surgeon with the U.S. Air Force before joining the Jesuits in 1955. He traveled to Africa as part of the Jesuit Refugee Service, using Nairobi as a base to travel to Sudan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Zaire, now Congo.
