Saint · Contemporary
St. Gianna Beretta Molla
1922–1962 · Italian Catholic Action; lay holiness
Physician, wife and mother; canonized 2004 by St. John Paul II in the presence of her husband and children.
A doctor from Magenta near Milan, a pediatrician in general practice, a leader in Catholic Action and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and a skier, climber and lover of music, she married the engineer Pietro Molla in 1955 and had three children. In her fourth pregnancy a fibroma was found on the uterus; she chose the operation that would save the child at greater risk to herself, telling her family that if they had to choose, “choose the child, I insist on it.” Gianna Emanuela was born on Holy Saturday 1962 and her mother died a week later. Her letters to Pietro and her notes for talks to young women treat marriage as a vocation and the body as “a monstrance” through which the world should see God.
Why he matters: A lay saint of ordinary professional and married life, canonized with her husband present, and a patron of mothers, physicians and the unborn.
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