Dr. Anthony Fauci has become something of a celebrity in recent weeks. The cool, calm, and collected bedside manner he’s now known for is a product of his deeply held Catholic faith.
Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, went to the Jesuit-run Regis High School in New York City and the College of Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and eventually studied at Weill Cornell Medicine, the medical school of Cornell University, according to Aleteia.
In 2006, the 79-year-old doctor wrote that he believes he has “a personal responsibility to make a positive impact on society.”
“I’ve tried to accomplish this goal by choosing a life of public service,” he wrote. “I am a physician and a scientist confronting the challenge of infectious diseases. I consider my job a gift. It allows me to try and help alleviate the suffering of humankind.”
This coronavirus pandemic is not Fauci’s first rodeo. In fact, he’s served under six White House administrations and was a leader during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.
In his writings, the researcher said many of his colleagues felt he was “misguided” in his focus on what many at the time considered “just a gay man’s disease.”
“But I felt that this was my destiny and was perfectly matched to my training,” he wrote. “I knew deep down that this was going to become a public health catastrophe.”
Ultimately, it was his work in fighting HIV/AIDS that earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to him by then-President George W. Bush, whom he credited for establishing the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Fauci also credits his Jesuit education for his gentile manner.
“This has had a major, positive influence on the fact that I enjoy very much and am fairly good at being able to communicate scientific principles or principles of basic and clinical research without getting very profuse and off on tangents,” he told Aleteia. “This is something that was drilled into us from the very early days in high school.”