Captain, Doctor, Sister
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Monday, January 26, 2009 9:00 AM
Sr. Deirdre Byrne is a Sister of the Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts, a board-certified surgeon, and an Army captain.
Recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan, she’s at work now in a clinic in the inner city of my hometown, Washington, D.C.
Yesterday’s Washington Times ran a wonderful profile of Sr. Dede and her work that I encourage you to read.
There’s a short video included at the link which includes great shots of the sister at work and at prayer (the squeamish are warned of some shots of unsightly tumors, too). I think you’ll appreciate what Sister has to say about her Eucharistic life.
While you’ll want to read about her work with our soldiers in Afghanistan and her ministry in DC, one of her side-lines actually caught my attention the most.
“I’m not just a pro-life doctor, I’m pro-eternal life,” she says. “God makes it very clear that he is working through me. … God gave me the opportunity to be a physician, and he creates the miracles.
To that end, while she was in Egypt with the Army in the late 80’s, Sr. Dede started a chastity club for female soldiers.
In 1985 and 1986, she served as an active-duty Army doctor in Egypt’s Sinai desert, where she started a group called the “Sunshine Club” that helped female soldiers “stay chaste and true.”
“We’d just go down to the Red Sea — it was very beautiful — and talk about how to stay strong, and about the pressures to do things they didn’t really want to do,” she says. “I was their mama.”
How often people of God, people of deep prayer, find ways to serve that are beyond what their duties are. They see a need and find a way to meet it—almost as if they can’t help themselves.
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