After ten years of medical training, I decided to take a break. A break from the grind of academic medicine, from the constant striving for the next publication, the next accolade, the next prestigious conference. Busyness had distracted me from the reason I wanted to be a doctor in the first place—to serve the sick. So after graduating from infectious disease fellowship, I took a chance and moved out of my apartment to dedicate the next year to medical humanitarian work.
An Opportunity
The Nuba Mountains are a region of Sudan that has experienced decades of war and oppression. The central government has isolated this region from the world by failing to provide basic needs and infrastructure for millions of people, including clean water, roads, schools, and healthcare. The people live in this region without much, while facing the constant threat of military air strikes. The opportunity to work in this environment immediately felt different from other humanitarian work I was considering. The need was extreme. It would undoubtedly be challenging on many levels, and not without personal risk, but perhaps I could be of use there.
Before going, however, I needed to prayerfully discern if this was right for me. Was this an open door God was inviting me into or a reckless decision I would later regret? I pondered this in prayer. Though the hospital I would be working in was saving lives each day, there were bound to be serious constraints on what they could do. I felt the shame of injustice as I pondered why I could receive the best healthcare the world has to offer while a Nuban woman could not. I knew that I would never fully comprehend the mysteries of why God allows seemingly arbitrary suffering in this world, but if Jesus truly is Lord, we must relinquish control and present our needs for him to act—not us. If I were to go to Nuba, I could not rely on myself. In that moment, I knew I had to go.
Mother of Mercy
Dr. Tom Catena is an American Catholic missionary who has dedicated his life to serving the people of Nuba. He is the medical director of the 400-bed Mother of Mercy Hospital, which was built in the heart of the Nuba Mountains in 2008. He is one of only a handful of doctors in the region and is the only full-time surgeon for the nearly two million people who live there. He works seven days a week and is on-call for surgical emergencies almost every night. Each morning, he rounds on the patients who are admitted to the hospital on the maternity, female, male, and pediatric wards, which adds up to several hundred patients each day. In the afternoon, he moves to the outpatient clinic and sees patients until the evening. Everyone who comes is seen. Two days a week are dedicated to scheduled surgeries, ranging from hernia repairs to ventriculoperitoneal shunts, C-sections to leg amputations. He also trains about ten Nuban clinical officers, who act as mid-level providers in the outpatient clinics and help with overnight emergency cases. The hospital is staffed with nurses in each ward, as well as other staff with specialty training in laboratory techniques, pharmacy, ophthalmology, physical therapy, and dentistry.
The room I would call home for the next two months was simple but had all the necessities: a bed, a mosquito net, sheets, a pillow, a sink, and a shower. A few buckets were available for showering when the water pump stopped working and for doing laundry. I had one of the few rooms on the compound with a working toilet, which was a luxury compared to the latrines everyone else used. Our solar panels stopped working after 6 p.m., and we had no wifi in the building. Head lamps were critical. Each day started with morning Mass in the hospital chapel at 7 a.m., followed by rounds on the ward with Dr. Tom at 7:30 a.m. I followed his rhythm and soaked in everything I could from him. I took care of patients with diseases I had never seen before, including tetanus, leprosy, schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis, brucellosis, as well as a slew of more common diseases, such as advanced cancers, tuberculosis, malaria, COPD, heart failure, cirrhosis, HIV, and hepatitis B. Though diagnostic testing was limited and medications were frequently out of stock, I learned so much about patience and humility from Dr. Tom. In this environment, you could not play God. At Mother of Mercy Hospital, you had to rely on God’s grace for everything. I quickly learned to trust my training and my instincts and make the best clinical assessment I could.
The local staff were welcoming and warm. My interpreter, Bakhita, named after the patron saint of Sudan, helped me communicate with patients. She was just out of high school and loved playing worship music while we saw patients together. She sang with the choir at church and lived close to the hospital with her mother, grandparents, and sister. We talked about her life and how she wanted to move away and continue her education, maybe become a nurse and find a new life outside of Nuba. I also worked alongside a local doctor named Gidu and several Nuban clinical officers, Abdunaku, Yoanna, Kaluka, and Bolis, who worked so hard with great joy and gratitude and never seemed frustrated despite the long hours. They spoke to me about the impact the hospital has had on the people of Nuba. Before the hospital was built, people simply died in their homes without care. Mothers in need of a C-section and their unborn children would die painful deaths without medications or surgery. Children with severe diarrhea would fade into a coma and pass away from dehydration. The Nuban people used herbs and tree bark as home remedies to cure disease. Some sought out traditional healers who burned the skin around a painful part of the body to alleviate their ailment. Superstition had a strong hold on people—families provided monetary offerings to other families believed to have special powers to ward off evil.
After the hospital was built, people stopped dying. Since 2008, the hospital has become a beacon of hope in a part of the world facing great uncertainty. It has relied almost entirely on private donations to cover hospital costs and provide life-saving treatment, and it has provided opportunities for employment to dozens of staff members. It has also empowered the local community to pursue careers in nursing and medicine by awarding full or partial scholarships to local students. By God’s grace, Dr. Tom has continued to work nonstop to provide essential medical services to the people of Nuba despite intermittent bombings on the hospital.
In the midst of despair, hope survives and flourishes through works of mercy by those who walk alongside the poor and forgotten.
Jubilee
Since returning to “normal” life back in the United States, I find myself pondering the meaning of this experience. In Nuba, I saw the fullness of humanity filled with great sorrow, suffering, doubt, uncertainty, hatred, and despair accompanied by resilience, joy, love, success, kindness, and goodness. But most of all, I saw hope and mercy poured out in abundance at Mother of Mercy Hospital.
The year 2025 has been declared a year of jubilee to renew ourselves as “pilgrims of hope.” This year, the Church encourages us to participate in works of mercy, pilgrimage, and reconciliation. In this jubilee year, I am struck by how powerful the virtues of hope and mercy are. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, hope is defined as “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” Hope is not impeded by great suffering but rather catalyzed by it. It is not a feeling but a declaration of trust in God. In the midst of despair, hope survives and flourishes through works of mercy by those who walk alongside the poor and forgotten. As St. Mother Teresa astutely observed, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten we belong to one another.” We belong to one another. Each of us can be an answered prayer for the other. I have been forever changed by the kindness I was shown by my Nuban friends. When I arrived in Nuba, I was poor in spirit, burnt out, and somewhat cynical, and they showed me great mercy that I will treasure forever. Their hope gives me hope for these beautiful mountains and the world at large.
If you would like to support the mission at Mother of Mercy Hospital, here are ways you can help:
1. Pray
Please pray for Mother of Mercy Hospital, all who work there, and the patients they care for. Please pray for peace in the Nuba Mountains and around the world, that all humanity may know freedom from oppression and violence.
2. Almsgiving
If you are able, providing a monetary donation to the hospital will directly impact patient lives in the Nuba Mountains.
3. Share
Sharing this story with others and raising awareness is a great help to the hospital and the people of Nuba.