When Pietro Molla was first approached for his wife’s cause for canonization, he was very surprised. He replied, “Look, I know I married a fantastic woman. But she was so normal!”  Their son, Pierluigi, later reflected that his father came from a generation where saints got their status from miracles and supernatural feats. Pietro’s wife, St. Gianna Beretta Molla, was to be part of the dynamic current of 20th century spirituality: “the universal call to holiness”.  John Paul II affirmed this call and gave it “flesh-and-blood” through the many ordinary people canonized during his papacy. He said, “I thank the Lord that in these years he has enabled me to beatify and canonize a large number of Christians, and among them many lay people who attained holiness in the most ordinary circumstances of life” (Novo Millenio Ineunte, 31). St. Gianna was recognized at the last canonization of his papacy.

It certainly spoke to me. I first heard Gianna’s story, when I had found my way to a small Catholic college, and I was also on track to make a career in the Air Force. I had a powerful conversion during these years, and this included a conversion to the pro-life cause. As I became devoted to both, I was amazed at the heroism of St. Gianna. She was that “sign of contradiction” that Christians are meant to be. She wasn’t the kind of sign that makes us incomprehensible to others, but the one that makes people stop and wonder.

Born in 1922, Gianna made her own way in a time when it was still quite unusual for women to do so. Gianna was a modern woman: a professional and a mother, an athlete, and a musician. She received two degrees in medicine, opened her own clinic, and married a loving man in her mid-thirties. Her relationships with those around her were expressions of her charismatic character. “When we think of saints, we don’t necessarily think of a woman who loved beautiful clothes, who had season tickets to the opera, who loved skiing, who liked to drive her car very fast,” says Fr. Thomas Rosica, a friend of the Molla family. Gianna’s mantra was not the cult of self, but instead, her often quoted, “Whatever God wants.” Her letters show that hers was a faith, not of pious sentiments, but something that she lived and breathed. Gianna felt like a friend to me, and, in her pictures, I recognized a warmth in her demeanor and a genuine smile.

After their marriage in 1955, Gianna and Pietro welcomed three children during their first four years of marriage, a boy and two girls. The couple then suffered two miscarriages before Gianna’s final pregnancy in 1961. During the first trimester, doctors discovered a life-threatening tumor in her uterus. Gianna not only refused the pressure of an abortion, but she also refused an alternative treatment. This treatment which would have been morally permissible in Catholic bioethics, but it would have meant the definite loss of her child. She chose a third surgical procedure; it gave the best outcome for her child but also the most risk to her own life. Gianna never wavered from this conviction. It is something I admired from the first time I heard it, but now, as a mother myself, it makes sense to me in a new way. I see that not only did she answer the call to “save a life”, but it was an incredibly personal expression of her motherhood. I have discovered for myself this fierce strength that lies within maternal love, this anointing that both gives and protects life. Ultimately, Gianna gave birth to another little girl on Holy Saturday in 1962, and she passed away one week later from labor complications.

Gianna was deeply devoted to her family and her story cannot be told without them. The extended Molla family is made up of fantastic people, and Gianna is a particular gem of her family’s charism.

It is believed that Pietro’s cause for canonization will open soon; he lived an incredible life in his own right. I wonder what would Pietro say to that? I am amused to think that my own husband would likewise be shocked should my own cause for sainthood be opened up (obvious as it may be to me). Still, like Pietro to Gianna, John is my number one fan and we are trying to build a holy family together. Gianna has been a wonderful friend to our family. We experienced her concrete intercession with our first daughter, which in turn prompted us to name our second daughter after her.  

St. Gianna Molla followed the path of Christ like many other saints. But, unlike the more “exotic” saints, Gianna shows us the way of “ordinary time”. This is the time that Christ loved so much that He made it the main feature of his 33 years of life. As I write, I am at the end of an ordinary day that, among other things, included tending a sick child, a broken dryer, and now a seven month old who is cruising around and just won’t go to bed. Gianna reminds me that God loves it all.

~ Julie Heinen