March 9, 2024 | Menlo Park, CA | Converging Roads

MOST REV. SALVATORE J. CORDILEONE
Archbishop of San Francisco

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was born in San Diego on June 5, 1956. He attended public school through 12th grade and earned his BA in philosophy from the University of San Diego in 1978. He earned a second bachelor’s degree in sacred theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in 1981. Archbishop Cordileone was ordained to the priesthood on July 9, 1982. He continued his studies at Gregorian University from 1985-89, earning a doctorate in canon law. He was appointed Judicial Vicar for the Diocese of San Diego in 1990 and served as an assistant to the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura from 1995-2002. On July 5, 2002, Pope John Paul II appointed him the Auxiliary Bishop of the Diocese of San Diego, where he served until his appointment as Bishop of Oakland on March 23, 2009. On July 27, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as the ninth Archbishop of San Francisco. He was installed on October 4, 2012. Archbishop Cordileone chairs the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage and sits on the Committee for Canonical Affairs. He is a member of the Governing Board of the International Theological Institute and the Subcommission on the Liturgy for the Anglican Ordinariates.

ARLAND K. NICHOLS
President, St. John Paul II Foundation

Arland K. Nichols is president and founder of the St. John Paul II Foundation. Early in his career, as an educator and non-profit executive, he became a popular speaker and successful writer while he established the groundwork for the initiatives that would become the St. John Paul II Foundation. Arland launched the St. John Paul II Foundation in 2014 and he is author of the 4th edition of the Handbook on Critical Life Issues published in 2024 by the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Arland earned a B.A. in philosophy from Texas A&M, an M.Div. in Theology from University of St. Thomas, and pursued doctoral studies in bioethics at Regina Apostolorum in Rome. With the generous support of his wife, Cindy, and their ten children, Arland is blessed to lead the St. John Paul II Foundation as it serves, educates, and supports medical professionals, married couples, and clergy.

NATALIE KING, MD, MA
Palliative Medicine Physician, Intermountain Health

Dr. Natalie King is a palliative medicine physician who specializes in caring for patients with serious illness and nearing the end of life. She is originally from Indiana and attended the University of Notre Dame. While in medical school at Tulane University, she founded the Catholic Medical Association Student Section. She completed internal medicine residency at the University of Utah and palliative medicine fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona. After fellowship she worked for several years as a palliative medicine physician in Colorado, helping lead her hospital’s ethics committee and teach trainees. She completed a master’s degree in bioethics from The Ohio State University, partnering with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to improve education around palliative care for Catholic laity. She has organized a forum for the Catholic Medical Association on end-of-life issues. She is passionate about education and advocacy about palliative medicine and ethical issues relating to serious illness and the end-of-life. Based on questions she has received at presentations she has given and from patients and their families, she recently wrote a book titled "Intensive Caring: A Practical Handbook for Catholics about Serious Illness and End-of-Life Care." Dr. King lives with her family in Utah.

CYNTHIA HUNT, MD
Psychiatrist and Chair of Catholic Medical Association National Opioid Task Force

Dr. Cynthia Hunt is a graduate of Loyola Stritch School of Medicine and Board Certified practitioner in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Psychiatry, which includes a year of fellowship training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She currently maintains an active practice at the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where she is the Chief of the Department of Psychiatry. She is also an Adjunct Faculty Member of St. Patrick’s Archdiocesan Seminary in Menlo Park, CA . She has been privileged to serve the Catholic Church over the last 12 years in the Exorcism and Deliverance ministry as psychiatric consultant to priests, exorcists and Bishops and is on the Advisory Board for the Pope Leo XIII Institute. She has been invited to give presentations on this topic in many settings including Priest/ Clergy Days, Deaconate Training, National Meetings of the Catholic Medical Association and the Catholic Psychotherapy Association as well as conferences with laity and SCRC. Dr. Hunt has also worked within the Catholic Medical Association for many years and has served as President of the Fresno Guild, member of the FIRE Committee, and as a speaker for CMA national and local conferences. She is currently a CMA Board Member and is Chair of the national CMA Opioid Task Force, meeting with Health and Human Services in Washington, DC. Recently she participated in representing North America at an International Meeting on Addictions at the Vatican through the Dicastery of Integral Human Development. An accomplished pianist, Lay Carmelite, and member of the Board of the Foundation of Prayer for Priests, she has been blessed with her husband of 27 years and their three children.

THERESA FARNAN, PhD
Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Co-founder of Person and Identity Project

Theresa Farnan, Ph.D., is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center focusing on the challenges of gender ideology as part of EPPC’s Person and Identity Project. She is the co-author of two books, Get Out Now: Why You Should Pull Your Child from Public School Before It’s Too Late and Where Did I Come From? Where Am I Going? How Do I Get There? She has taught at St. Paul Seminary in Pittsburgh, Franciscan University of Steubenville, and Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and has worked with the diaconate formation program for the Dioceses of Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. She served as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth and is a member of the Catholic Women’s Forum Advisory Council. She has lectured widely on gender ideology, Catholic education, theology of the body, the personalism of Pope John Paul II, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the vocation and dignity of women. She hosted St. Thomas Aquinas in Today’s World on the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN). She received her master’s degree and her doctorate in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame. She and her husband, Michael, have ten children.

JULIAN LAGOY, MD
Psychiatrist, Mindpath Health

Dr. Lagoy received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, his medical degree from St. George’s University, and completed his psychiatry residency at Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. He is published in multiple medical journals and presented his research at multiple conferences including the American Psychiatric Association National Meeting and the World Psychiatric Association International Congress in Spirituality and Psychiatry. He is featured in numerous media outlets including Forbes, WebMD, US News and World Report and Popular Science. Dr. Lagoy has a passion for service. Prior to starting medical school, he served as a Catholic missionary in the Philippines with Con-solatio, an international Catholic NGO. During residency, he served on the hospital ethics committee, and was awarded the Humanism in Psychiatry Award and the Claudio Award from Con-solatio for his compassion in patient care. Dr. Lagoy currently practices at Mindpath Health and serves the Catholic Church in the Exorcism and Deliverance ministry as a psychiatric consultant to priests and exorcists. He is certified in Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and specializes in treating severe depression. He currently lives in California with his wife and two daughters.

WILLIAM STIGALL, MD, MA
Adjunct Asst. Professor, University of Dallas, Department of Philosophy

Dr. William Stigall is a Pediatric Critical Care Physician and Bioethicist. He’s a graduate of the University of Texas Business School and University of Texas-Southwestern Medical School. He underwent medical training at UTSW/Children's-Dallas for Pediatric Residency, Chief Residency, and Critical Care Fellowship. He completed an additional Fellowship in Pediatric Cardiac Critical Care at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix. During residency and fellowship, Dr. Stigall obtained a Master's in Philosophy from the University of Dallas. He has been a member and chair of multiple bioethics committees and has taught bioethics at the University of Dallas for over a decade. His loves of medicine, philosophy, and the application of knowledge to heal have coalesced in his current role as Vice President and Chief Research Officer at Cook Children’s. He still attends in Cook’s Pediatric ICU, but not as much as he would like. Along with being adjunct faculty in the Philosophy Department of the University of Dallas, Dr. Stigall is a member of the clinical faculty of the TCU School of Medicine. He has spoken locally and nationally on the biopsychosocial effects of contraception and oxytocin, the practice of medicine as an Aristotelian art, and the Hippocratic Oath, among other topics. He is convinced that much more can be done to develop an evidenced based bioethics and discussions like these are a necessary first step. Dr. Stigall and his wife, Kathryn, were married in 2001, serendipitously on the feast day of the nativity of Our Lady. They are converts to Catholicism and came into the Church Easter of 2004. They have been blessed with 3 sons, John, 18, James, 9, and Peter, 7. John, James, and Peter are living proof that man’s soul is rational from its very beginnings and goodness has infinite variety. The Stigall family enjoys reading, travel, running, tennis, and any excuse to get outdoors.

LELANYA KEARNS, MD
OBGYN, El Camino Health

Lelanya Kearns had 17 years of Catholic education before attending medical school at the University of Kentucky and doing her residency in Cincinnati, Ohio. She has been offering women care for 17 years in San Jose, California while raising her own family of five children. She also makes time to be a spiritual director in the Ignatian tradition and is active at several parishes in San Jose— including Saint Frances Cabrini and Holy Spirit. She has been on a continuous process of adopting Catholic principles to her practice of medicine for many years.

REV. GARY R. THOMAS, M.DIV
Director of Propaedeutic Year Program, St. Patrick’s Seminary & University

Fr. Gary Thomas is the inaugural Director of the Propaedeutic Year program at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California.  The Propaedeutic Year is a pre-seminary preparation program to prepare men who have been accepted by their bishops for priestly studies to enter the philosophical and theological disciplines. He is a native of San Francisco, and he attended All Souls grade school. He is a 1971 graduate of Serra High School in San Mateo, a 1975 graduate of the University of San Francisco with a B.S. in Business Management, and a 1976 graduate of the San Francisco College of Mortuary Science. He completed his M.Div. from St. Patrick's Seminary in 1983.  Fr. Thomas was ordained a priest for the Diocese of San Jose and has served in various ministries throughout his 37 years as a priest. They include parochial vicar at three local parishes, a six-year term as diocesan Director of Vocations, a six-year term as chaplain of St. Francis High School, in Mountain View, California, a 12-year term as pastor of St. Nicholas Church, Los Altos, and a 15-year term as pastor of Sacred Heart Church, Saratoga, CA.  Fr. Gary also served for 15 years as a diocesan exorcist. Father Gary's vision of his role in this new ministry at the seminary is one of accompaniment with the men who will be discerning their priestly vocation as they are made part of a setting that involves the formation of the whole person: intellectual, pastoral, spiritual, and emotional components that will support both the discernment of the vocation and the application of this experience to their call to Christian discipleship.

DOLORES MEEHAN, NP
Nurse Practitioner & Executive Director, Bella Primary Care

A career advocate of lifelong wellness and life-affirming care, Dolores’ motivation to ease the anxiety and suffering of her patients has led her to develop an extensive and varied background in adult-gerontological acute care, vascular surgery, and family healthcare. Before completing the graduate program in Adult-Gerontological Acute Care Nurse Practitioner and post-grad fellowship in outpatient vascular surgery at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), Dolores worked for eleven years as an acute care registered nurse—including providing medical care to the underserved in both Northern California and rural Nigeria and Gabon—and seven years as a perioperative nurse in vascular surgery. In addition to her medical training at UCSF, Dolores also holds a BS in Nursing from Samuel Merritt University and a BA in Psychology from the University of California Berkeley.

8:00 AM	Check-In Begins
8:30 AM	Mass
9:45 AM	Opening Remarks
9:55 - 10:55 AM	Imago Dei: Human Dignity as a Foundation for Medical Ethics
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM	The Good Samaritan and the Practice of Medicine
12:00 PM	Break
12:15 - 1:15 PM	The Unique Mission of Catholic Health Care
1:15 - 2:50 PM	Hippocratic Oath Luncheon
1:45 -2:45 PM	A Christian Anthropology for Understanding Gender and Sexuality
2:50 PM	Break
3:10 - 4:10 PM	Wellness and Care for the Health Care Professional
4:15 - 5:15 PM	Challenging Prenatal Diagnoses and the Gift of Human Dignity
5:25 - 6:00 PM	Wine & Cheese Reception

about Converging Roads

Where Health Care Ethics and Medicine Converge

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TOPICS

Imago Dei: Human Dignity as a Foundation for Medical Ethics

The Good Samaritan and the Practice of Medicine

The Unique Mission of Catholic Health Care

A Christian Anthropology for Understanding Gender and Sexuality

Wellness and Care for the Health Care Professional

Challenging Prenatal Diagnoses and the Gift of Human Dignity

SCHEDULE

8:00 AM

8:30 AM

9:45 AM

9:55 - 10:55 AM

11:00 AM - 12:00 PM

12:00 PM

12:15 - 1:15 PM

1:15 - 2:50 PM

1:45 -2:45 PM

2:50 PM

3:10 - 4:10 PM

4:15 - 5:15 PM

5:25 - 6:00 PM

Speakers

MOST REV. SALVATORE J. CORDILEONE Archbishop of San Francisco

ARLAND K. NICHOLS President, St. John Paul II Foundation

NATALIE KING, MD, MAPalliative Medicine Physician, Intermountain Health

CYNTHIA HUNT, MDPsychiatrist and Chair of Catholic Medical Association National Opioid Task Force

THERESA FARNAN, PhDFellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and Co-founder of Person and Identity Project

JULIAN LAGOY, MDPsychiatrist, Mindpath Health

WILLIAM STIGALL, MD, MAAdjunct Asst. Professor, University of Dallas, Department of Philosophy

LELANYA KEARNS, MDOBGYN, El Camino Health

REV. GARY R. THOMAS, M.DIVDirector of Propaedeutic Year Program, St. Patrick’s Seminary & University

DOLORES MEEHAN, NPNurse Practitioner & Executive Director, Bella Primary Care

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St. Patrick's Seminary & University

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