Michigan Area members turned out to support the first fundraising gala for the new Heart of Christ Medical Clinic, located in Detroit’s historic Corktown neighborhood. With 450 people in attendance, the gala raised about $300,000 for the clinic. The September 28th event, held at the Burton Manor in Livonia, raised funds for the clinic’s grand opening, planned for mid-October 2023. The Heart of Christ Clinic was founded to serve patients regardless of income and insurance status, providing high-quality care to women and families. The Heart of Christ Clinic is housed in the former convent of Ste. Anne de Detroit parish. The four-floor clinic, which includes an adoration chapel with the Blessed Sacrament, has a floor for obstetrics and gynecology, and a separate floor for family medicine.
The clinic is a collaboration of healthcare providers Ascension Michigan and Trinity Health Michigan, as well as Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan, Christ Medicus Foundation, the Knights of Columbus, Mother and Unborn Baby Care, and the Order of Malta. The clinic will care for the whole person, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, with Jesus Christ, the Divine Physician, as its model.
“We brought together all these different Catholic organizations to operate as one Church, serving everyone with Christ’s healing love, not fragmenting groups of patients by income or insurance access, but treating them as one community,” said David Wilson, KM, who helped organize the effort. The clinic’s organizers hope to open clinics on the same model in each of Michigan’s seven Catholic dioceses.
“The clinic’s mission and work are truly inspiring,” said gala attendee Andrea Smith, DM, a certified nurse midwife with experience serving the predominantly Spanish-speaking neighborhood where the clinic is located. “There is no other clinic of its kind in the area that looks to treat both the physical and spiritual needs of the women in this community, and through the women their children and families. I am very proud that the Order of Malta has played a part in bringing a clinic like this to the neighborhood.”
Clinical psychologist Dr. Ray Guarendi, host of the radio show “The Dr. Is In” and of EWTN’s “Living Right with Dr. Ray,” served as the gala’s master of ceremonies. Sr. Deirdre Byrne, MD, POSC, was the keynote speaker and the first recipient of the Heart of Christ Award. Sr. Byrne is an active missionary sister and the superior of her religious community, The Little Workers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, in Washington, D.C., where she ministers to the medical needs of inner-city residents. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, Sr. Byrne is double board-certified in family medicine and general surgery.
Other speakers included Dr. Kristin Collier, MD, director of the University of Michigan Medical School Program on Health, Spirituality, and Religion; attorney Louis Brown Jr., KM, executive director of the Christ Medicus Foundation and associate director of the Center for Law and the Human Person at Catholic University of America; and Kathryn Jean Lopez, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and director of the Center for Religion, Culture, and Civil Society at the National Review Institute. Music for the gala was provided by Irish tenor Mark Forrest, an internationally-famed singer who has performed for St. John Paul II and St. Teresa of Kolkata. The evening included dinner and a live auction.
