Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege is known as “Doctor Miracle” for his ability to repair through reconstructive surgery the horrific damage inflicted on women who have been raped, received the Nobel Prize.  Denis Mukwege, nicknamed “Dr. Miracle” for his specialized procedures, was co-recipient for the annual honor alongside Nadia Murad, a Yazidi activist who survived rape and kidnapping by ISIS in Iraq. The Nobel committee said both winners modeled “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.”

Over the past 20 years, Mukwege has treated tens of thousands of women in Panzi Hospital inBukavu, many of who had been gang raped by militants in the midst of the country’s conflict, left scarred and stigmatized.  Muswedge is an extraordinary man who risked everything to heal, cherish and honor women.  The 63-year-old physician set up the Panzi hospital in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo city of Bukavu nearly 20 years ago – shortly after he had his first experience of treating a woman who had been raped and mutilated by armed men. He is not only the founder of the Panzi Hospital but also the co-founder of the City of Joy in the republic of the Congo.  His recognition is a call to men across the planet to do the same. 

His faith influences his approach to caring for patients holistically, “not only to treat women—their body, [but] also to fight for their own right, to bring them to be autonomous, and, of course, to support them psychologically. And all of this is a process of healing so women can regain their dignity,” he told NPR.

Dr Mukwege remembers his the first patient he treated who had suffered such abuse saying the woman had not only been raped but bullets had been fired into her genitals and thighs. He,along with his colleagues, have since treated tens of thousands of victims.

Panzi hospital now cares for more than 3,500 women a year. Sometimes Dr Mukwege performs as many as 10 operations a day.

Mukwege is the son of a Pentecostal minister and was inspired to pursue medicine after traveling with his father to pray for the sick. Panzi Hospital, which he founded in 1999, is managed by the Pentecostal Churches in Central Africa (CEPAC).

Dr. Mukwege has not only saved lives, but has also traveled the world  bringing attention to these women. He has spoken at the UN, in parliament and in Washington DC.  For some time he felt he was shouting into the void and no one wanted to listen. But, withe the winning of the Nobel this past year, he and his women survivors has awakened the world to the use of rape as a tactic of war and armed conflict.

Dr. Mukwege said he “shares this award with women survivors and activists around the world who have for decades worked to end the scourge of sexual violence. Survivors not only need recognition but they need reparations and an end to impunity.”

If Christians do not live out the practical implications of their faith among their communities and neighbors, “we cannot fulfill the mission entrusted to us by Christ,” he said at a keynote for the Lutheran World Federation last year.

Further, the 63-year-old doctor advocates out of a Christian understanding of men and women as equal in dignity before God. He wears a button on his lab coat that says, “Stop Raping Our Greatest Resources, Power to the Women and Girls of the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

“It is up to us, the heirs of Martin Luther, through God’s Word,to exorcise all the macho demons possessing the world so that women who arevictims of male barbarity can experience the reign of God in their lives,”Mukwege told the Lutheran assembly.

Christian groups have joined alongside Mukwege’s crusade against sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in the DRC, where violence has threatened the population for decades. (As CT reported, 3.9million were killed and more than 40,000 raped in the decade since fighting began in 1996. It has gone on long past the official end of the civil war in 2003.)

“Dr. Mukwege’s incredible work with survivors of sexual andgender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo inspires me, andmany of us,” Rick Santos, president and CEO of the Christian nonprofit IMAWorld Health, said in a statement on Friday. “We are honored to call him andPanzi Hospital a partner in the effort to eradicate SGBV in a place where it isso pervasive.”

Violent rape has left thousands of Congolese women bearing long-tem physical consequences, including fistula, which leads to incontinence and infection, as well as injuries that complicate childbirth.

Once the only doctor in the province to treat these women, he has become  world’s leading expert on repairing injuries of rape. The Pentecostal hospital also offers the patients therapy, legal assistance, community resources, and help reintegrating into their community.

Mukwege challenged fellow Christians to consider “the credibility of the gospel in the 21st century, to liberate the grace that we have received by making the church a light that still shines in this world of darkness hrough our struggles for justice, truth, law, freedom, in short, the dignity of man and woman.”