“If one were to consider how much Jesus suffered, one would not commit the smallest sin.”
Saint for the unborn.
Gianna was born on October 4, 1922, in Magenta in the Kingdom of Italy. She was the 10th of 13 children.
When she was 3, her family moved to Bergamo and grew up in the Lombardy region of Italy. As a young girl, she openly accepted her faith and the Catholic education provided to her by her loving parents. She grew up viewing life as God’s beautiful gift and found the greatest necessity and effectiveness in prayer.
At the age of 20, she began her study of medicine in Milan. She was diligent and hardworking. As a member of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, she applied her faith for the elderly and needy. She received degrees in both medicine and surgery from the University of Pavia and opened a medical office in Mesero near her hometown.
She considered medicine to be her mission, and increased her generous service to Catholic Action, which spread social teachings of the Church in the broader culture. She had hoped to join her brother who was a missionary priest in Brazil, but her chronic ill health made it impractical.
Instead, she embraced the vocation of marriage in 1955, to form a truly Christian family, after meeting Pietro Molla, an engineer who worked in her office. They had 3 children and she handled motherhood with grace in her demanding life.
Her 4th child had complications and in the 2nd month, she was struck with unimaginable pain. She was carrying both a baby and a tumor.
Most of the options she was presented with ended with the death of her child. She pleaded with the doctors to save her child’s life which she thought was more important than her own. She sought comfort in prayer and faith. Surgeons removed the tumor successfully, and saved the baby’s life, but the remainder of the pregnancy had complications. Still, she always placed the child 1st. She delivered by C-section, but a week after the baby was born, she passed away from septic peritonitis.
She was beatified in 1994 and canonized as a saint on May 16, 2004, with her husband and their children present. It was the 1st time a husband witnessed his wife’s canonization.
She is the inspiration behind the 1st pro-life Catholic healthcare center for women in New York. The Gianna Center: https://www.chsli.org/gianna-center
She is the patron saint of mothers, physicians, and unborn children.
Her feast day is April 28.
For God’s Glory.
“The stillness of prayer is the most essential condition for fruitful action. Before all else, the disciple kneels down.”
