When Dr Tim Millea, a physician from Iowa, speaks about the annual national Catholic Medical Association conference, he describes it as a “spiritual adrenaline rush.”
“If you think about the Catholic Medical Association, we are a small organisation in general, but the apostles started with 11, and then 12, and then church fathers continued to preach the Gospels.
We know the message,” Millea said. “In health care we need to look at our patients and see them as the image of Christ. It is the Mother Teresa model.”
Millea was one of the many participants and speakers at the 93rd annual Catholic Medical Association Educational Conference, held 5-7 September at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando.
The event, which gathered Catholic physicians and their families, followed the theme “Imago Dei: Made in His Image, Male and Female He Created Them.”
The theme was developed by Dr Felix Rodriguez, a medical oncologist from St Matthew Parish in Lake Worth, who is president of the Palm Beach Physicians Guild, which is connected to the Catholic Medical Association.
“As a Catholic physician what we would love to tell everyone is we are here to serve you and to love you and we want to make you whole,” said Mercy Sister Mary Gretchen Hoffman, a doctor of internal medicine who serves the underserved in Oklahoma.
“We want to make you a beautiful person, and also get you to heaven.”