By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Writer
President Barack Obama has nominated Dr. Regina Benjamin, a rural Alabama doctor and a Catholic who received the Pro Ecclessia et Pontifice medal from Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, as the nation’s next Surgeon General.
Dr. Benjamin has been referred to as an “angel in white” for her dedicated service to the poor community she serves on Alabama’s Gulf Coast where a third of the population is comprised of immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. She is known to make house calls and accepts whatever payment is offered by her often uninsured patients.
Noted for being a national leader dedicated to improving health care disparities, Dr. Benjamin grew up in the historically African-American parish Shrine of the Holy Cross in the Gulf Coast town of Daphne, Alabama. She graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans, a Catholic school founded by St. Katharine Drexel, and received her medical degree from the University of Alabama, Birmingham.
The first black woman admitted to the American Medical Association, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Alabama in 1990. It was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Volunteers helped her to rebuild the clinic and it was just about to reopen when it burned to the ground.
Her patients were so desperate for the services provided by the clinic, they pitched in to help her rebuild the clinic once again. During that desperate time, it was one woman’s gift of $7 that inspired Dr. Benjamin to keep going.
“If she can find $7, I can figure out the rest,” Benjamin said last fall when she received a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” to finish the job of rebuilding.
She received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 1998 and was awarded the Pro Ecclessia et Pontifice medal in 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI. The medal is awarded to lay people and clergy who have given zealous and outstanding service to the Church.
Msgr. Michael L. Farmer, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Mobile and rector at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Mobile, told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that Dr. Benjamin is a “delightful lady” who serves as a lector at the Cathedral.
“She’s noted not only for clinic work, but for going on site to these people’s homes. And they’re not necessarily the nicest places to go to,” Msgr. Farmer said.
Given the appointments and policy decisions of the Obama Administration that favor the promotion of abortion, CNA asked Msgr. Farmer if he knew what Dr. Benjamin’s position is on abortion. He explained that he did not “explicitly” know Dr. Benjamin’s position on abortion and other life issues and had never discussed it with her.
“I would hope that her position would be in line with the Church’s position,” he told CNA. “As far as I know she has been in conformity with the Catholic Church.”
“I would hope that that would continue,” he added, noting that it could be “difficult” to adhere to Catholic moral teaching in a position with the Obama Administration.
Dr. Benjamin’s nomination will require Senate approval.
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