The Cry of the Poor and Healthcare: A Conversation with Dr. Alexandre Martins

Welcome to the eighteenth episode of season 2 of What Matters Most. I spoke to Alex Martins from his office in Milwaukee in February and have been waiting to get this episode to you for the past two months. 

Alexandre A. Martins is a theologian and bioethicist from Brazil; he is also a nurse. He received a Ph.D. in theological ethics/bioethics from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (USA) where he studied bioethics and global public health from a liberation approach. He then received a Post-Doctorate Degree in Democracy and Human Rights from the Human Rights Center at the Law School of the University of Coimbra, Portugal. He is a specialist in health care ethics and social ethics, especially in the areas of public health, global health, community-based health care, and Catholic social teaching, which you will hear about on this episode. As he tells us in this episode, citing Pope Francis, “you have to listen to the poor,” specifically in terms of health care, to move away from dependency, to sustainability, to local agency.

As a healthcare provider and global health advocate, he has served in middle and low-income countries throughout the world, such as Brazil, Bolivia, Haiti, and Uganda. Currently he is an associate professor at the Department of Theology and the College of Nursing at Marquette University in Wisconsin, where he is also director of undergraduate studies for the theology department, and William J. Kelly, S.J., Chair in Theology (2023-2026). He also serves as Regional Coordinator of Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church for Latin American and Caribbean region, and Vice-President of the Brazilian Society of Moral Theology.

There is so much you will learn about Alex’s life in this podcast that is moving, inspiring, and generative of love for the other. At the end of the podcast he says, “let the suffering of the other touch us and let the touch generate a response that puts ourselves with them.” Before we get to that powerful ending, we will learn about basic ecclesial communities in Brazil, his life as a teenager on his own in Sao Paulo, liberation theology, agricultura familiar, Paulo Freire, Paul Farmer, global health, Gustavo Guttierez, and what Christology has to teach us about health care.

Here are some links for books and articles written by Alex and others who have influenced his thought. In the Company of the Poor was written by Fr. Gustavo Guttierez and Paul Farmer. I mentioned the book about Paul Farmer by Tracey Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains and it is a beautiful introduction to his work and that of Partners in Health. The method of teaching that Alex mentioned was pioneered by Paulo Freire, whose best-known book is Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Leonardo Boff is a Brazilian liberation theologian who ran afoul of the Vatican in the 1980s and 90s for his book Church, Charism and Power : Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church. He ultimately left priestly ministry.

Also, you might want to look into basic ecclesial communities and agricultura familiar in Brazil.

Alex’s scholarship has been broad. He is widely published, and he has lectured in various countries, including Canada. Please check out his lecture for the CCE at on Care for the Sick in Catholic Healthcare. I will mention only a few of his books and I will link to them:

Christology and Global Ethics: Encountering the Poor in a Pluralist Reality (Mahwah, NJ.:  Paulist Press, 2023)

A Prophet to the Peoples: Paul Farmer’s Witness and Theological Ethics, co-edited with Jennie Weiss Block, OP and M. Therese Lysaught, (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications by Wipf & Stock, 2023).

Covid-19, Política e Fé: Bioética em diálogo na realidade enlouquecida (São Paulo, SP: O Gênio Criador, 2020)

The Cry of the Poor: Liberation Ethics and Justice in Health Care (Lanham, MD.: Lexington Books, 2020)

For his other writings, please check out his Marquette University website.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Thanks to Martin Strong, Kevin Eng, and Fang Fang Chandra for all of their help and support in crafting this and all the other episodes. I also want to thank our donors to the Centre, whose generosity enables this work to take place at all: Peter Bull, Angus Reid, and Andy Szocs. In addition, the Cullen Family, Mark and Barbara, continue to support the work and outreach of the CCE, particularly in our lecture series. 

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @stmarkscce. Or email me or Ms. Fang Fang Chandra at cceconferences@stmarkscollege.ca. Let us know what you think.

I also want to ask you to help out by letting people know about the podcast. If you are enjoying the podcast, please let your friends know. You can also let people know by rating and reviewing What Matters Most on your favourite podcasting platform. This lets people find the podcast more easily and lets people like you enjoy the work that we are doing. I think these are important and inspiring discussions and I would like people to have a chance to listen in!

Upcoming Episodes:

And now some news on upcoming podcast episodes:

Dr. Hans Abdiel Harmakaputra, of the department of religion, philosophy & classics at Augustana University;

Mr. Inderjeet Singh, Sikh chaplain at UBC;

Dr. Jaime Waters, Boston College;

Dr. Sara Parks, St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

Finally, some upcoming events:

May 17, 2024 Sister Damien Marie Savino will be offering the second annual Laudato Si’ lecture, Educating for Laudato Si at St. Mark’s College. Please keep your eyes out for more information – it is coming soon.

May 16, 2024, Sister Damien Marie Savino will also be doing a workshop on Laudato Si’ at St Joseph the Worker church in Richmond, B.C., so if you are local please look for that information.

Finally, the CCE is presenting a conference in 2025, The Promise of Christian Education: Past, Present and Future,  MAY 1-3, 2025, at ST. MARK'S COLLEGE, VANCOUVER, CANADA. I will link to the CFP in the show notes, so please consider sending in a proposal for a paper. If you are a graduate student and we accept your proposal to present a paper, we will cover your conference registration fees and the cost of the conference banquet. Consider joining us in Vancouver in 2025. We will announce the names of our plenary speakers soon, but I can say that 3 out 4 of the speakers are now confirmed.

John W. Martens

Director, Centre for Christian Engagement, St. Mark's College at UBC