Dr. Tom spoke at the University of Notre Dame Institute for Social Concerns’ annual lecture in honor of Fr. Bernie Clark this Wednesday. Catena shared an inside look at his past 17 years as the only permanently stationed doctor in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains. He described how his faith impacts his work and keeps him going:
“Happiness is temporal,’ he said. ‘Joy is a feeling that lasts, in knowing what I’m doing is giving me meaning.’
“Catena explained the greatest obstacle in the Nuba Mountains is logistics.
“We are the end of the world,’ he said. Supplies must be ordered a full year in advance and pass through several conflict zones in South Sudan, through roads that are only open a few months out of the year. ‘If we forget something in that order, it might be six, seven months before we get it.’
“He recounted a recent delivery in which bandits shot through a supply truck’s windshield, killing a soldier riding with the driver. The driver survived, was robbed, and still completed the route. ‘That’s what we have to go through … to deliver just Tylenol to the hospital,’ he said.
“Resilience is key in the Nuba Mountains. One frequent patient of Catena’s is Amud, who he says, ‘has more like 20 lives rather than nine.’ Amud survived a bullet wound to the temple and returned months later with a shattered femur. ‘We put him in traction,’ Catena said, and eventually, ‘he walked out of the hospital back onto the battlefield.’
“Students considering medicine, he said, should pursue it for the right reasons. ‘Pick pursuit of medicine for medicine and medicine only,”’he said. ‘Love science and people.”
photo by Sophia Magnano