Who was St. Gianna Beretta Molla?
Gianna Beretta was born in Magenta, near Milan, on October 4, 1922, the tenth of thirteen children. The Vatican's biography says that as a girl she "willingly accepted the gift of faith" from her parents, and she lived it in the ordinary ways of a Catholic girl of her time: Catholic Action, and the St. Vincent de Paul Society, visiting the old and the poor. She took her degree in medicine and surgery at the University of Pavia in 1949, opened a clinic in Mesero, a village near Magenta, and specialized in pediatrics at the University of Milan in 1952. The Vatican gives 1950 for the clinic; Franciscan Media says 1952. She treated mothers, babies, the old and the poor, and she regarded medicine, in the biography's words, as "a mission." She skied. She climbed mountains. She was not a sad saint.
She prayed about her vocation and chose marriage. A few days before the wedding she wrote to her fiancé, the engineer Pietro Molla, a line John Paul II would quote at her canonization: "Love is the most beautiful sentiment the Lord has put into the soul of men and women." They married on September 24, 1955, in the Basilica of St. Martin in Magenta. Pierluigi was born in November 1956, Mariolina in December 1957, Laura in July 1959. Franciscan Media adds that two later pregnancies ended in miscarriage; the Vatican biography does not mention them.
In September 1961, toward the end of the second month of a new pregnancy, she was found to have a fibroma in her uterus, and an operation was required. The Vatican biography states what happened next without embroidery: before the operation, "conscious of the risk that her continued pregnancy brought, she pleaded with the surgeon to save the life of the child she was carrying." The child's life was saved. She spent the seven months that remained, the biography says, "in incomparable strength of spirit and unrelenting dedication to her tasks as mother and doctor." A few days before the birth she told the doctors: "If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: choose the child – I insist on it. Save him." Gianna Emanuela was born on the morning of April 21, 1962. Despite, in the biography's words, "all efforts and treatments to save both of them," the mother died on the morning of April 28, repeating "Jesus, I love you." She was thirty-nine. She is buried in the cemetery at Mesero.
Paul VI spoke of her at the Angelus on September 23, 1973, as a young mother who, "to give life to her daughter, sacrificed her own, with conscious immolation." John Paul II beatified her on April 24, 1994, in the International Year of the Family, and canonized her on May 16, 2004. In the homily he called her "a simple, but more than ever, significant messenger of divine love." Franciscan Media notes that Gianna Emanuela, the child she died for, became a physician.
Why Catholics pray to St. Gianna for a pregnancy, a family and healing
No decree names Gianna patron of anything. Franciscan Media lists physicians, unborn children and wives, and the patronage is traditional, which is to say it came from people who recognized themselves in her. She is the saint of the pregnant woman who has been given frightening news. She is the saint of the doctor who has to deliver it. She is the saint of the mother of three small children who is also trying to hold down a job, and of the husband who has to carry on alone.
What exactly is asked of her needs care. Gianna had the operation; she asked the surgeon to save her child, and she accepted the risk to herself. John Paul II said at the canonization that her "extreme sacrifice" shows that people fulfil themselves by giving themselves fully to God and to others, and he asked the age "to rediscover the pure, chaste and fruitful beauty of conjugal love." Catholics ask her, then, for a safe delivery, for the healing of a sick mother or child, for courage inside a bad diagnosis, and for a marriage like hers.
How to pray to St. Gianna
Her day is April 28, the day of her death. It is not on the General Roman Calendar, so most parishes will not keep it, but it is the day her devotees keep and the one Franciscan Media gives as her feast. A novena is usually made in the nine days before. Mothers also pray to her on a due date, or on the morning of a scan.
Say the prayer below, then tell her what the doctor said. Take the same intention to Mass, and, if fear has turned into bargaining or anger, to Confession.
And be clear about this. A prayer to St. Gianna goes alongside a doctor, never in place of one. Gianna was a doctor herself, and she put her case in a surgeon's hands. If you are facing a decision about a pregnancy or a treatment, ask her prayers while you talk honestly with your physician, with your spouse, and with a priest or a Catholic hospital chaplain who can help you think it through. She is not a saint who tells you to be alone with it.