Wife and mother

Three weeks ago, in the Vatican, Gianna Beretta Molla was canonized. I was fascinated by the simple, warm, passionate beauty of her life. I think that she should be the patron saint, after the Virgin Mary, of every wife and mother.

In her own family, she was the tenth of thirteen children. Two of her brothers became priests. One of these was a Capuchin, a doctor, and a missionary to Brazil in South America. One of her sisters became a Canossian nun.

She graduated from medical school, with a major in surgery, at the age of 27. When she went into regular medical practice, she gravitated toward children. Eventually she became a pediatrician.

She was extremely sensitive, played the piano, and loved painting. She was enraptured at the sight of snow. She climbed mountain peaks, in the Alps.

She considered her practice of medicine as a vocation. She wrote: "In this world, all of us work in some way for the service of mankind. We doctors work directly on man. We have opportunities that the priest does not have. Our mission is not finished when medicines are of no more use. There is the soul, to be brought to God."

"It is God who says: ‘He who visits a sick man, helps me.’. . . . As the priest can touch Jesus, so we doctors touch Jesus in the bodies of our patients: poor, young, old, children."

She fell in love. She felt that this love was a grace, the voice of God, calling her to marriage. She thought of marriage as a vocation. Two of her brothers and one of her sisters were called by God to be religious. She felt that God was calling her to be a wife and mother. To her, marriage was sacred, a great sacrament, a mission to serve.

In her early youth, Gianna wrote: "I must prepare for family life right now. It is not possible to take this road unless you know how to love. To love means to have the intense desire to improve one’s self, to overcome selfishness, to give yourself. Love must be total, full, complete, regulated by God’s law, and must be immortalized in heaven."

Preparing for marriage, Gianna wrote: "Purity presides over the rightful and lawful use of the pleasure of the body. The body of a girl, itself, is sacred. Our body is an instrument which is united to the soul in order to do good. I must surround my body with the fence of sacrifice. Then purity will become a beauty, a freedom, a joy."

Gianna became engaged to Pietro Molla. Their letters to each other are amazing. They were intimate, affectionate, personal love letters, and just as holy and as pure as the writings of Saint Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower.

On February 21, 1954, when she was 31 years old, she wrote: "I would like to make you happy and be the woman you desire: good, understanding, and ready for the sacrifices that life will ask of us. I intend to dedicate myself to forming a really Christian family."

On June 10, she said: "I love you very much, so much! Pietro, you are always in my mind, starting from the morning when during Mass, at the Offertory, I offer your work with mine, your joys, your sufferings, and then during the day until evening."

And then – on September 24, 1955 – the church bells rang and a burst of applause greeted the 32 year old Gianna Beretta who, dressed in a pure white wedding gown, entered the Basilica of San Martino, in Magenta, a suburban town of Milan. She accepted Pietro Molla, a young engineer from Mesera, to be her lawful husband, according to the rite of Holy Mother Church, "for richer, for poorer; for better, for worse; in sickness and in health, until death."

They had three children in the first four years of their marriage. In September, 1961, pregnant with their fourth baby, Gianna was found to have a large tumor in the womb. The doctors wanted to remove the tumor and terminate the pregnancy. She refused to let them do this.

When it was time for her to deliver, she knew that she was going to the hospital, but she was not sure that she would return. Entering the hospital on Good Friday, April 20, 1962, she said to her husband: "Pietro, if they ask you for a decision, save our baby! I demand it, Pietro. Save our baby!" Then she herself told her doctor to save the baby, at any cost.

The child was born on Saturday in Holy Week — a beautiful, healthy little girl. They named her Gianna Emmanuela, "God is with us". One week later, on April 28, 1962, Gianna — the mother — died. She was 39 years old.

But during that week before she died, she wrote to her husband: "I have been there! I have been there! We will be so happy there! As we have been happy here. God wanted me to come back, to suffer a little, before going home to Him."

Pietro, talking about the way Gianna died, said: "She was looking at her baby, with wide eyes. She was saying goodbye to her, with her eyes." And then he wept.

When Gianna said: "Save our baby", she was not saying: "Choose the baby rather than me." She was just repeating the ancient, medieval moral doctrine of the Catholic Church: the doctor should do all in his power to save both mother and child. He should not kill the baby to save the mother. Nor should he kill the mother to save the baby. He should try to save both.

The case is sometimes described as if it were an agonizing drama for the doctor, thinking: "Whom shall I save – the mother or the baby?" This drama never happens. The baby never has a chance. If a mother dies on the delivery table, all who knew her say: "And the doctor was Doctor Cruz!" Doctor Cruz goes out of business.

But if the baby dies, and the mother lives, everyone says: "She was in real danger of death, but Doctor Cruz saved her!" Doctor Cruz is in honor.

So the doctor usually says to the husband: "I have to perform a craniotomy, or mother and child will die!" The father never saw the baby; he loves his wife, so he signs the paper, granting permission, and the baby is killed to save the mother.

That is what Gianna wanted to prevent. She herself was a doctor. She knew exactly what she was saying.

So Giana Emmanuela, 42 years old now, was at the canonization of her mother. Pietro Molla was at the canonization of his wife. Pier Luigi Molla, her son, was one of the priests who concelebrated with John Paul II when the Holy Father canonized his mother.

She dedicated herself to forming a Christian family — and she did it! She knew what love was. Greater love than this no mother has, than to lay down her life for her baby.