The Thomas Gerard Catena Lecture in Medicine, Faith, and Service invites speakers whose work displays innovative scholarship, service, and institution-building at the intersection of theology, medicine, and culture.
The Hours of our Dying: Spirituality, Ethics, and Medical Care at the End of Life
Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, 2024 Catena Lecturer
Thursday, February 29 ,2024
Daniel Sulmasy, M.D., Ph.D., M.A.C.P.
Dr. Sulmasy is a senior research scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University and a faculty member at the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics. He is the inaugural Andre Hellegers Professor of Biomedical Ethics, with co-appointments in the Departments of Philosophy and Medicine at Georgetown. His research interests encompass both theoretical and empirical investigations of the ethics of end-of-life decision-making, ethics education, and spirituality in medicine. He has done extensive work on the role of intention in medical action, especially as it relates to the rule of double effect and the distinction between killing and allowing to die. He is also interested in the philosophy of medicine and the logic of diagnostic and therapeutic reasoning. His work in spirituality is focused primarily on the spiritual dimensions of the practice of medicine. His empirical studies have explored topics such as decision-making by surrogates on behalf of patients who are nearing death, and informed consent for biomedical research.
Dr. Sulmasy continues to practice medicine part-time as a member of the university faculty practice. He completed his residency, chief residency, and post-doctoral fellowship in General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He has previously held faculty positions at Georgetown University and New York Medical College. He has served on numerous governmental advisory committees and was appointed to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Problems by President Obama in April 2010. He is the author or editor of six books:
- The Healer’s Calling (1997)
- Methods in Medical Ethics (2001; 2nd ed. 2010)
- The Rebirth of the Clinic (2006)
- A Balm for Gilead (2006)
- Safe Passage: A Global Spiritual Sourcebook for Care at the End of Life (2013)
- And Francis the Leper: Faith, Medicine, Theology, and Science (2014).
He also serves as editor-in-chief of the journal Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. Dr. Sulmasy holds a Ph.D. from Georgetown University and an M.D. from Cornell University. He joined Georgetown from the University of Chicago, where he was Kilbride-Clinton Professor of Medicine and Ethics in the Department of Medicine and Divinity School, associate director of the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics in the Department of Medicine, and director of the Program on Medicine and Religion.
Shalom: A Ministry of Reconciliation in Medicine in Sub-Saharan Africa
Dr. Russell White, 2023 Catena Lecturer
Thursday, March 30, 2023
Dr. Russell E. White
Dr. Russ White was born in the Belgian Congo to medical missionary parents. He attended Roberts Wesleyan College, the University of Michigan School of Medicine, and the Harvard University School of Public Health. He completed a general surgical residency at Brown University and a fellowship in cardiothoracic surgery at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, England. He has served as the chief of surgery at Tenwek Mission Hospital in Kenya since 1997, where he spends the majority of his time. He is a clinical professor of surgery at Brown University School of Medicine in Providence, R.I. He was the program director of the Tenwek Hospital General Surgery Residency program from 2008 until 2017. In this capacity, he worked as a full-time medical missionary with World Gospel Mission with other consultant Christian surgeons at Tenwek Hospital to train ten surgical residents in a fully approved five-year general surgical residency. In 2018, he initiated the first fellowship level training in cardiothoracic surgery in the region, which graduated its first board-certified cardiothoracic surgeon in January, 2021. He is also the chairman of the Education and Scientific Research Committee for the College of Surgeons of East, Central, and Southern Africa, responsible for education and research for surgical residents in training in 13 different countries in the region. His passion is for teaching and mentoring young surgeons in a distinctly Christian setting. He has special interests in cancer of the esophagus and rheumatic heart disease. Dr. White was awarded the American College of Surgeon’s “Humanitarian Surgeon of the Year” award in 2012, the Surgical Society of Kenya’s “Surgeon of the Year” in 2017, and the L’Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Mission Service in 2017, awarded through the African Mission Health Foundation.
Dr. White is currently working closely with Tenwek Hospital and Samaritan’s Purse to build a new cardiothoracic center at Tenwek Hospital. This will be the largest dedicated cardiothoracic unit in Sub-Saharan Africa. Construction began in 2021, and should be completed by January, 2024.
For Human Dignity, I Will Not Keep Silent
Marguerite "Maggy" Barankitse, 2022 Catena Lecturer
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Maggy Barankitse
Marguerite “Maggy” Barankitse was born at Nyamutobo in 1957 in Ruyigi province, East-Burundi,. She was a teacher at a local secondary school, she then went to work as a secretary for the Catholic bishop in Ruyigi.
Despite mounting tensions, Barankitse put her dream of ethnic harmony into practice by adopting seven children: four Hutus and three Tutsis. As violence escalated between the two tribes following the assassination of the first democratically elected president of Burundi, a group of armed Tutsis descended on Ruyigi on October 23, 1993, to kill the Hutu families who were hiding in the Bishop’s manor. Barankitse had managed to hide many of the children but was caught by the fighters. They beat and humiliated her and forced her to watch the killing of 72 Hutus, but she refused to tell them where the children were hidden. Ultimately, she was spared only because of her Tutsi heritage. After the ordeal, Barankitse gathered her adopted children and the surviving orphans and hid them in a nearby school. As more and more children sought shelter with her, she decided to create a small nonvgovernmental organization: Maison Shalom, the House of Peace. Her house was open to children of all ethnic origins: Tutsi, Hutu, and Twa. She calls them “My Hutsitwa children”, and they call her Oma (or “grandmother” in German). In the following years, Maison Shalom in Ruyigi was one of the few places in Burundi where Hutus and Tutsis cohabited in harmony.
Since the events of 1993, over 20,000 children and youth have benefited from Maison Shalom. Before the current crisis in Burundi, the organisation employed more than 270 people, including nurses, psychologists, and educators who implemented special projects for the children.
In April 2015, Barankitse spoke out against the third term of President Pierre Nkurunziza and joined the youth demonstrations denouncing him. As a result, she was obliged to hide for a month in an embassy in Bujumbura. Eventually, she had to flee; the government had her name on a death list. Barankitse found herself a refugee.
Yet, her refugee status did not stop her devotion to alleviating suffering: She has opened a branch of Maison Shalom in Rwanda.
Gratitude in Action: One Doctor. One Hospital. One Million Patients
Tom Catena, M.D., 2019 Catena Lecturer
November, 19th, 2019
Dr. Tom Catena
The Inaugural Catena Lecture featured Dr. Tom Catena, who is the only physician for a population of more than 750,000 in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, a conflict zone where humanitarian aid is restricted. At the Mother of Mercy Hospital, which he founded in 2007, he treats as many as 400 patients a day and is on call around the clock. Treating casualties of the region’s civil war, he performs more than 1,000 operations each year, often without running water or electricity.
In 2018, Catena received the Catholic Doctor of the Year Award from the Mission Doctors Association in Los Angeles. In 2017, Dr. Catena was awarded the $1.1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, which honors unsung heroes working to preserve human life at great personal risk. He is the recipient of Honorary Doctorates from Brown University (2016) and Yerevan State Medical University (2017) and was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2015.
About Dr. Tom Catena
Dr. Tom Catena, who is the only physician for a population of more than 750,000 in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains, a conflict zone where humanitarian aid is restricted. At the Mother of Mercy Hospital, which he founded in 2007, he treats as many as 400 patients a day and is on call around the clock. Treating casualties of the region’s civil war, he performs more than 1,000 operations each year, often without running water or electricity.
In 2018, Catena received the Catholic Doctor of the Year Award from the Mission Doctors Association in Los Angeles. In 2017, Dr. Catena was awarded the $1.1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity, which honors unsung heroes working to preserve human life at great personal risk. He is the recipient of Honorary Doctorates from Brown University (2016) and Yerevan State Medical University (2017) and was named one of the 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2015.
Dr. Tom Catena delivered the inaugural Catena Lecture in 2019.