As the only doctor at a hospital serving more than 2 million people, Dr. Tom Catena works seven days a week and is on call every night — and still makes time for morning Mass.
An American Catholic missionary and the only surgeon at Mother of Mercy Hospital in the remote Nuba Mountains of Gidel, Sudan, Catena has spent more than two decades in Sudan in spite of civil war and conflict.
Catena told EWTN News that Sudan is “home to one of the worst humanitarian crises.” The United Nations has described the civil war, which began in April 2023, as the most devastating humanitarian crisis, killing more than 150,000 people and displacing another 12 million people. In the region, the mother and infant mortality rate for maternity care is among the highest in the world.
“There really is no such thing as an average day here, and that’s part of what makes this work so demanding,” Catena said. “At Mother of Mercy Hospital, we are the only major medical facility serving more than 2 million people in the Nuba Mountains, so the volume and variety of what we see is staggering.”
Photo by the Aurora Initiative