Uploaded November 2019 | Updated September 2026, 19 hours ago
Dr. Tom Catena delivered the Inaugural Catena Lecture in Medicine, Faith, and Service at Duke Divinity School on November 19, 2019.
The annual lectureship publicly appreciates and encourages students to study the example of Dr. Tom Catena, an alumnus of Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Catena 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 1000 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.
The Catena lectureship is administered by the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School, in partnership with the Duke Global Health Institute, and The Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine.
Dr. Tom Catena delivered the Inaugural Catena Lecture in Medicine, Faith, and Service at Duke Divinity School on November 19, 2019.
The annual lectureship publicly appreciates and encourages students to study the example of Dr. Tom Catena, an alumnus of Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Catena 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 1000 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.
The Catena lectureship is administered by the Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative at Duke Divinity School, in partnership with the Duke Global Health Institute, and The Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine.
