Farmer on ‘Corporal Works of Mercy’

Dr. Paul Farmer, the health care activist who is known internationally for his work among the poor in Haiti and other impoverished areas around the globe, delivered a lecture before a standing-room-only audience at Yale Divinity School on April 26.  The title of Farmer’s talk was "The Corporal Works of Mercy and the 21st-Century Struggle Against Poverty."  Catholic tradition enumerates seven “Corporal works of mercy,” including feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and visiting the sick.  Farmer, the Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard Medical School, has cared for, and advocated on behalf of, the poor through the organization he helped found in 1987, Partners in Health. Co-sponsoring the event with Yale Divinity School were the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics at Yale and the Yale Medical Humanities Lecture Series.