Dr. Tom Catena, a Catholic missionary doctor in Sudan, will be featured speaker at benefit dinner in St. Louis Nov. 7
In the remote Nuba Mountains of Sudan’s South Kordofan region, Catholic missionary Dr. Tom Catena says that the smallest victories are magnified in the biggest ways.
It could be a patient’s unexpected improvement or a good outcome from a medical procedure. Or it’s the expansion of vital healthcare services in various parts of Sudan, or the development and leadership of staff at Mother of Mercy Hospital, where he serves as medical director.
“It gives me the encouragement to keep going,” Catena said in an interview from Sudan via Zoom. “The positive things, the victories are magnified, seeing people get better and how the staff are taking on challenges and ownership of things have buoyed my spirits and keep me going.”
Catena has served as a medical missionary in Africa for more than 25 years, the last 17 at Mother of Mercy, a Catholic hospital located in Gidel in southern Sudan. The late Bishop Macram Max Gassis of the Diocese of El Obeid founded the hospital in 2008. It has expanded into a 480-bed facility, serving roughly 3 million people.
Catena will be the main speaker at a dinner in St. Louis on Nov. 7 to benefit African Mission Healthcare. The event is part of a multi-city tour throughout the United States to raise $3 million for operational costs at Mother of Mercy Hospital.
Mother of Mercy is Sudan’s main referral hospital, serving about 400 patients daily. Catena is the only full-time surgeon in Sudan, and the hospital is the only location offering specialized vision, dental and cancer care. Patients travel for days on foot, donkey or bicycle to get there.
The collapse of health services, power grids and sanitation systems in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum and the displacement of millions of civilians have led to an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Sudan’s most recent civil war, which began in 2023, has complicated services at Mother of Mercy, including access to food, supplies and medicine.
“Everything that we get has to come through South Sudan,” Catena said. “We make our annual medicine order in August and we will get it sometime in April, May or June of the following year. We have to think way in advance so we are not cut short.”
In 2013, the hospital launched an outreach program to support smaller clinics throughout the Nuba Mountain region. Of the 19 clinics supported by the hospital, about six of them have trained clinical officers, which is similar to a physician’s assistant. Mother of Mercy has added departments, including a trained eye surgeon, a dental department and a high-dependency unit similar to an Intensive Care Unit.
Catena felt called to become a missionary while an undergraduate student studying mechanical engineering at Brown University. Realizing there wasn’t much missionary work available for mechanical engineers, he attended Duke Medical School. After completing his residency in Indiana and serving as a Navy doctor for five years, he went to Kenya, where he developed his surgical skills. In 2008, he moved to Sudan.
His Catholic faith drew him to mission work, he said. “Without that, I would have left a long time ago,” he said. “We’ve had very difficult times here in Sudan because of the ongoing fighting.”
Catena finds inspiration from St. Daniel Comboni, a 19th-century Italian missionary to Africa and founder of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus and the Comboni Missionary Sisters, who believed that the works of God are born at the foot of the cross.
“Even in a place with challenges and hard times, you know you’re in the right place,” Catena said. “That has given us tremendous encouragement to keep going.”
Dinner with Dr. Tom Catena
Dr. Tom Catena will speak at a dinner benefitting African Mission Healthcare on Friday, Nov. 7, at The Chateau at the Augustine Institute near Florissant. Dr. Catena, the only full-time surgeon serving more than 3 million people in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, will talk about his lifesaving work. African Mission Healthcare partners with mission hospitals across sub-Saharan Africa to support direct patient care, train health care professionals and sponsor surgeries.
Tickets are $150 per person. To RSVP by Oct. 17, visit www.paperlesspost.com/go/dkr5LVkfjkGjbVHdPJENB or contact Alexis at Alexis.Mummertz@AfricanMissionHealthcare.org or (614) 259-7229.
To learn more about Dr. Catena, visit africanmissionhealthcare.org/drtom2025/.
