By Father Seán Coyle

On 16 May Pope John Paul canonized Gianna Beretta Molla. She was born near Milan on 4 October 1922 and grew up in a strongly Christian family that led her to experience life as a marvelous gift from God. During her student years she was active in Catholic organizations and spent much time with the elderly and needy. She graduated as a doctor in 1949 and opened a clinic the following year near her home place. She specialized in pediatrics at the University of Milan. Gianna considered medicine a mission and practiced it with generosity, especially among the poor. She also loved skiing and mountaineering as her sister-in-law, Virginia Beretta, recalls. Playing the piano and going to the opera at Milan’s famous La Scala were also part of her life as was dabbling in oil-painting.

Gianna married Pietro Molla on 24 September 1955, when they dedicated themselves ‘to forming a truly Christian family.’ In November 1956 Pierluigi was born, in December 1957 Mariolina and in July 1959 Laura. With her passion for life, Gianna was able to balance the demands of being wife, mother and doctor.

Her Greatest Choice

Early in her fourth pregnancy in 1961 Gianna developed a tumor in her uterus. She needed an operation, entrusted herself and the child to God and pleaded with the surgeon to save the life of her child. The surgeon did but she still had to face seven more months of pregnancy and a dangerous birth procedure. She asked God that the baby not be born in pain and told the doctors, ‘If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: choose the child – I insist on it.’ She gave birth to Gianna Emanuela on 21 April 1962 but died after a week in great pain and many times uttering the prayer, ‘Jesus, I love you.’ Because of the advance of medical science, a mother today would probably not have to make the choice that Gianna did.

Gianna’s Miracles

Pietro, now 92 and wheelchair-bound, attended the canonization of his wife with their four children. The two miracles required for canonization both involved mothers in Brazil. In 1977 a woman in a clinic run by Gianna’s brother gave birth by Caesarean section to a stillborn child. Because of severe complications the doctors wanted to transfer her to a hospital 600 kms away. But the staff prayed to Gianna and next day she was completely healed.

The second, in 2000, involved a young woman who lost all her amniotic fluid early in her pregnancy. Her doctors told her that if she didn’t abort the baby she risked death. She too prayed to Gianna and, defying medical science, gave birth to a healthy baby.

Pope John Paul II in his homily at the canonization recognized that Gianna remained heroically faithful to the commitment she and Pietro made on their wedding day. ‘Her extreme sacrifice shows that only those who have the courage to give themselves completely to God and their brothers can fulfill themselves,’ he said.

But Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini SJ, former Archbishop of Milan, observed, ‘Her life is the same as that of many men and women made up of little events that don’t make the history books. Her capacity for heroism comes from her healthy everyday life, an example of popular holiness that is accessible to everyone.’ In other words, all can imitate this new saint in her everyday ‘ordinary’ holiness. Father Paolino Rossi OFM Cap., postulator of her cause, stressed, ‘It’s an error to reduce her sainthood and her example to the last extreme gesture. It was the culmination of a life lived with great intensity and a profound love of God and her fellow man.’ Antonia Galli, a former patient, simply said, ‘For me she was already a saint when she died.’

A few days before the canonization, one of Britain’s hopes for an Olympic medal this year, 400-meters hurdler Tasha Danvers-Smith, told The Daily Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk , that she wouldn’t be going to Athens in August after all. Last November she married her American coach, Darrell Smith, and a few months later discovered that she was pregnant. She and her husband admitted that they had briefly considered an abortion, as both of them had been totally focused on the Olympics. ‘If I had run at Athens it would have meant greater financial security, more recognition,’ Tasha said. ‘But this line from the Scriptures kept coming into my head: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”’

Tasha found great support from her delighted family. ‘My dad was great,’ she said. He was just about to book tickets to Athens when she told him, ‘Dad, I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is I'm pregnant. The bad news is I'm pregnant.’ ‘Yeah,’ he answered wryly, ‘that is good and bad news.’

I don’t know if Tasha Danvers-Smith knew about the canonization of Gianna Beretta Molla but both are mothers who sacrificed what was most dear to them for their unborn children and who are beacons of hope in a very self-centered world.