Dream back on track for med school in Tanzania - Ministries - Peter Le Jacq

National Catholic Reporter, Sept 20, 2002 by Arthur Jones

Sept. 11 changed the patterns of many lives

At the time, Maryknoll Fr. Peter Le Jacq, a physician, was back in the United States--from Tanzania where he normally worked--fundraising on the East Coast for a proposed Catholic medical school to be built on the shores of Lake Victoria.

The World Trade Center tragedy meant Le Jacq switched priorities--from begging money to reaching out to young members of his immediate family who had lost a parent. But as the months passed, Le Jacq was able to again pick up some of the threads of his delayed Tanzanian dream for a "Bugando University College of Health Sciences medical school."

Tanzania has three referring hospitals for 33 million people, one doctor for every 25,000 people, and one dentist for every 300,000. Le Jacq thinks big. Once he's found funds to establish and support the medical school's four years of study, he wants a dental school and a pharmacy school and to bring the nursing school up to the bachelor's degree level "to develop leaders."

He's been able to devote enough time to the project that the first year medical students will walk through the doors in January. Le Jacq will be there.

Not all the money is in hand yet for the second year, but his network of support has expanded widely in the past 12 months and he has almost enough pledges.

Le Jacq has a habit of getting what he wants.

When he was in eighth grade he wrote a religion class essay on "Why I want to be a priest-doctor in Africa." He wanted it because his family took Maryknoll magazine, and Le Jacq absorbed its stories the way other kids followed Batman and Robin.

"I heard a priest describe in a homily what it is to be a priest," said Le Jacq, "letting God love people through you, and letting God love you through the people you serve. I thought that if that's all there is to it that's the job for me. You don't have to do anything. You just stand there.

"I also realized from the magazine that Jesus--though he didn't go to medical school--encouraged us to preach and heal. I don't have his gift of healing, so if I wanted to preach and heal I'd have to go to medical school."

New York City-raised Le Jacq contacted Maryknoll in 1976, was encouraged to go through the first two years of medical school, stay in touch and re-decide.

"Until the 1980s it was against canon law for a priest to be a doctor," said Le Jacq. "That was based on the Council of Trent's belief that medicine was magic. And they didn't want a sacramental minister performing magic. Sisters and brothers were always allowed to be doctors because they were not sacramental ministers."

Le Jacq would become Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers' sixth M.D (four currently); the Maryknoll sisters have had 30 to 40 doctors (15 currently).

After two years at Weill Cornell Medical College, Le Jacq told Maryknoll he hadn't changed his mind. He was sent for "a summer experience" in a Guatemalan jungle hospital in Jacaltenango where he worked with locally famed Maryknoll sister and medical doctor "Madre Rosa" (Sr. Dorothy Erickson--see Penny Lernoux's Hearts on Fire, Orbis).

So he could enter the seminary, Cornell agreed to let Le Jacq take a year's leave between his third and fourth years if he passed Pan 2 of his medical boards early. He studied for the exam in a Franciscan monastery in Dublin, Ireland, while doing "a little work" in medicine in a Dublin inner-city hospital.

He passed Part 2, and after his Maryknoll novitiate finished his final year at medical school.

For his New York State license, Le Jacq didn't need a residency, but he did need an internship. "I did the bare minimum, an internship, because I didn't want to be overtrained for the Third World and become frustrated." Internship completed, he returned to Maryknoll until his ordination in 1987.

Then he went to Tanzania.

"When I was a child," he said, "Maryknoll magazine made it very clear--and unfortunately it's still the case--that the continent of Africa is the poorest continent in the world. It's probably going to remain so due to the climatic fact that it's the only place in the world that has years of drought as part of its natural cycle."

During theological training Le Jacq had spent each summer in a different part of the world--a Cambodian refugee camp, a dispensary in southern Tanzania's desert, and "a little work in China as part of a Cornell exchange. I realized quickly there is no nice Third World assignment," he said. "They're all going to have major drawbacks. Of all the places, I thought I could function best in Tanzania." Once he'd mastered Swahili.

"By linguistic standards, Swahili is easier to learn than French," he said, and after four months at language school he was practicing medicine in Tanzania. He was first assigned to a Mennonite mission--a joint operation with the government--as a volunteer.

Bugando Hospital in Mwanza is at 3,000 feet above sea level. The shores of Lake Victoria have a daily high in the high 80s, nightly lows in the low 80s, and sunshine even during the rainy season because the rains fail to arrive.