Brenton Stacey
Public relations officer
Wahroonga, New South Wales, Australia

Avondale College has honoured the man who helped establish clinical pastoral education and the study of the ethical implications of medical research at Sydney Adventist Hospital.

Avondale Library’s bioethics collection, named after Dr Tom Ludowici, includes more than 5000 books and 25 journal subscriptions, making it one of the largest in Australia. Credit: Ann Stafford.

It has named the more than 5000 books and 25 journal subscriptions in its bioethics collection after Dr Tom Ludowici, the former director of mission at the hospital. He and the hospital’s former general superintendent (1968-1990), Dr Bert Clifford, established and developed the collection. Tom’s role as the first, and only, director of the Christian Centre for Bioethics—he organised conferences at the hospital each year between 1986 and 1994 and in 1996 and 1998—saw the collection grow. According to head librarian Marilyn Gane, the collection is now one of the largest in Australia. “Its scope is comprehensive and its intent universal,” she said during the naming ceremony at the hospital on Monday (April 19).

In a tribute to his former colleague, Bert described Tom’s tenure as chaplain beginning as “seismic movements were shaking the hospital world.” He noted four of his former colleague’s most significant achievements: establishing a counselling service focused on greatest need; establishing a professional fraternity of chaplains; establishing a clinical pastoral education program; and helping establish the study of the ethical implications of medical research—Tom served as secretary of the hospital’s human research ethics committee from 1985 to 2005. “You articulated a vision, confronting the challenges of outreach in a new age,” said Bert. “In contemporary parlance, your vision has been actualised.”

Dr Arthur Patrick, an honorary senior research fellow at Avondale, offered the prayer of dedication, honouring Tom for his “diligence, resilience and foresight.” “Ours is a complex world. . . . Often we stand at the crossroads of faith and science, needing wisdom,” he prayed. “Enable us all to learn from the treasures in this collection, enable us to share in their application to lesson pain, anxiety and stress, and to advance the mission of this hospital.”

Arthur succeeded Tom as senior chaplain in 1991 and wrote the book, The San: 100 years of Christian caring, 1903-2003. On inheriting the work of his friend, he said, “I found a deep caring for all of God’s people, whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian.”

Pr Kevin Price experienced this firsthand. The director of Adventist health ministries for the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the South Pacific served as assistant senior chaplain under Tom between 1983 and 1989. “He was accepted by many doctors as an equal, a professional,” he says.

College president Dr Ray Roennfeldt and hospital chief executive officer Dr Leon Clark unveiled a plaque during the ceremony. The plaque will soon hang in the Tom Ludowici Bioethics Collection, which is located in the library on Avondale’s Sydney campus.