Journey 2 · Holiness Under One Roof
Saint Gianna Beretta Molla
Hands that welcomed life
Feast day April 28
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Saint Gianna Beretta Molla
Hands that welcomed life
Map of a life
This life told in 6 chapters
Begin the journey
Feast day
Saint Gianna Beretta Molla
Some places may celebrate on a slightly different day.
April 28
Patron of
- Mothers and pregnant women
- Unborn children
- Doctors and nurses
Often depicted with
- Holding a little child
- A doctor’s white coat
Opening
Opening
Long before the world came to honor Gianna Beretta Molla for giving her life,
- there was a devoted doctor who opened her clinic door every morning;
- a young woman who loved the snow-covered mountain slopes;
- a tender wife waiting for her husband’s footsteps at the door;
- and a young mother chattering among her little children.
Looking back on those years of youth, we meet a woman who loved life passionately. Gianna loved the beauty of the world, loved to learn, threw herself into her work and gave herself fully to love.
It is because she loved life so intensely that the choice she made at the end moves us so deeply. It was not a reckless, impulsive act. It was the flower of a tree nourished through many seasons of sun and rain in a life of faith.
Chapter 1 of 6
Growing up amid faith and loss
Gianna was born on October 4, 1922, in Magenta, near Milan, Italy. She was the tenth of thirteen children of Alberto Beretta and Maria De Micheli. It was a well-ordered, devout family, its faith woven into every prayer and song and into the way they treated others each day.
Gianna’s school years took her through the cities of Bergamo and Genoa. The girl’s health was not always good; for a time she had to leave school to recover. In 1937, her older sister Amalia died. Then in 1942, while the Second World War was ravaging Europe, Gianna suffered two great losses one after another: her mother died on April 29, and her father died on September 10 of the same year.
In less than five months, a girl not yet twenty had lost the two people she leaned on most. The family was left stunned and grieving, while bombs were still falling across Italy. Yet Gianna did not collapse.
Retreats with Catholic Action helped her see clearly the ideal she would live by: this life is not for lamenting one’s lot, but for giving. In November 1942, Gianna began studying medicine in Milan, later transferred to Pavia, and graduated with distinction as a doctor of medicine on November 30, 1949, in years when Italy was still climbing out of the ashes of war and a young woman going all the way in medicine was still rare.
Having known deep grief at losing those she loved, she chose to become a doctor to ease the pain of others. A doctor cannot save every patient, but every sick person needs a caring hand willing to come close and share the burden.
Chapter 2 of 6
The clinic in Mesero
On July 1, 1950, Gianna opened a private clinic in the small town of Mesero, in the Lombard countryside. She kept on studying and completed a specialization in pediatrics at the University of Milan on July 7, 1952. Children, poor mothers and lonely old people always held a special place in the young doctor’s heart.
Medicine puts a person face to face with stark realities: pain does not keep office hours, and a patient’s anxiety and fear cannot be eased by perfunctory words. Gianna brought sound medical knowledge to her healing, and the light of faith to the way she treated each person. For her, a patient coming to the clinic was not an impersonal medical file, but a life of flesh and blood, with a family waiting at home and hidden pains not yet spoken.
She took an active part in the charitable work of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, and accompanied and guided the young women of her parish. Letters from her brother, a priest-doctor serving as a missionary in Brazil, once moved her to think of going to the Americas as a missionary. But through the wise discernment of her spiritual director, and because of her health, she recognized God calling her to give herself right at home, among the ordinary patients of this small town.
Outside her demanding clinic hours, Gianna loved life: she liked listening to symphonies, was passionate about skiing in the high mountains, and enjoyed driving a car — a rather daring pastime for an Italian woman in the postwar years. There is no need to leave such healthy joys out of a saint’s portrait. They show a woman who received life as a beautiful gift from the Creator, who loved the open air and lived joyfully amid countless responsibilities.
Chapter 3 of 6
A love with a name and an address
On December 8, 1954, at a parish event in Mesero, Gianna met the engineer Pietro Molla. Love between these two mature people blossomed gently. They were formally engaged on April 11, 1955, and married on September 24 that same year in the Basilica of San Martino in Magenta.
Gianna embraced married life with all her warmth. She loved this particular husband, and wanted to build this particular home with him. Faith did not cool the love between them; it made their bond as husband and wife holy.
The home soon rang with children’s laughter: Pierluigi was born in 1956, Mariolina in 1957, and Laura in 1959. Now there were three little ones to carry, rock to sleep and nurse through every winter cold. Gianna was a mother and a wife, while still keeping up her work at the clinic. She juggled the small tasks of each day, with all the strain every working mother knows.
Their family happiness also knew loss: her next two pregnancies both ended in miscarriage. That sorrow weighed heavily on husband and wife. Then a new life was conceived in her womb once more.
Chapter 4 of 6
Seven months of quiet waiting
In September 1961, when she was nearly two months pregnant, Gianna learned to her dismay that there was a large fibroid growing in her uterus. On September 6, 1961, she had to be admitted to the San Gerardo hospital in Monza for surgery.
Faced with three medical options — removing the entire uterus, which meant the child would die at once; terminating the pregnancy and then removing the tumor, to keep the mother completely safe; or removing only the tumor, accepting a direct threat to the mother’s life as the pregnancy advanced — Gianna did not hesitate.
As a skilled doctor, she understood better than anyone the deadly risks. As a mother, she firmly begged her colleagues to protect, at all costs, the little life taking shape:
“Please, doctors, save my child!”
The tumor was removed successfully, and the baby went on growing. Gianna went home to seven long months of anxious waiting. She still cared for her husband and children, and still saw poor patients within the limits of her strength.
We should not reduce this story to one reckless decision made in a moment. For seven whole months that mother had to fight silently against pain and against the looming fear of death, beside her husband and three small children who needed their mother.
As the due date approached, Gianna told her husband in a firm, decisive voice:
“Pietro, if you must choose between me and the child, do not hesitate: choose the child. I insist on it!”
It was the free choice of a mother ready to give her life for her child. We can stand in awe of so great a heart without using it to judge other mothers facing other desperate medical situations.
Chapter 5 of 6
A mother’s last week
On April 21, 1962, Holy Saturday, Gianna Emanuela was born by cesarean section. The baby came into the world crying and healthy, but her mother’s health declined quickly. Septic peritonitis raged through her, bringing high, delirious fevers and terrible pain.
The doctors fought to save her with every means modern medicine had. This is in no way the story of someone refusing medical care. But her illness did not improve.
All through that painful week, she herself — a doctor who knew better than anyone what painkillers could do — refused morphine, though the pain was so severe that no one could have blamed her for accepting it. She feared only that the drug would cloud her mind and leave her too drowsy to pray in the last hours of her life. A doctor who had spent her life using medicine to ease others, chose at her own hour to bear the pain unrelieved so as to keep her conversation with God whole until her last breath.
Knowing she would not survive, Gianna asked to be taken back to her beloved home in Ponte Nuovo, to die beside her husband and children. At dawn on April 28, 1962 — the Saturday after Easter — she peacefully closed her eyes, at the age of thirty-nine.
In her last faint breaths, her prayer was gathered into a single whisper:
“Jesus, I love you... Jesus, I love you...”
A whole life of study, healing, being a wife and a mother was gathered into that cry of love. Pietro was left with four young children. The life of the newborn girl could not erase the vast emptiness of a husband who had lost his wife and children who had lost their mother. To honor Gianna’s love is also to honor those left behind, who had to go on living.
Chapter 6 of 6
Hands that cherished life
Gianna Beretta Molla was beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II on April 24, 1994, and canonized on May 16, 2004, in Saint Peter’s Square, with her own husband and children present. It was a rare moment in the history of the Church: the husband and children of a new saint were alive to see it with their own eyes. Her feast is April 28 each year.
- Doctors and nurses find in her a holy colleague.
- Married couples find an example of loving family life with a pure and ardent love.
- And mothers find a heart that knew both the happiness and the wrenching pain of motherhood.
We remember Gianna not only for her final moment of sacrifice. We remember the clinic door always open to the poor, her footsteps in the snowy mountains, the radiant smile of a woman coming home after an exhausting day of work. All those days shaped a pair of hands that knew how to cherish life.
And when those hands could no longer hold her children, life was still handed on into other hands, so that a mother’s love would go on, a song of life that never ends.
The end of the story
You have walked with Saint Gianna Beretta Molla to the end of the story.
You will keep seeing:
Before a dangerous operation, she pleads: "Please, doctors, save my child!"
Near the due date, she tells her husband: "If you must choose between me and the child, choose the child."
In her last hours, she refuses painkillers, only to stay clear-minded enough to pray: "Jesus, I love you..."
Stay in silence
One thing sinks in deeply: this was not a decision made on impulse in a single moment, but a flower blooming from a whole life spent loving life with everything she had.
The greatest love is not always loud — sometimes it is simply a quiet choice, held firm to the very last breath.
Let us pray
Saint Gianna,
you were a doctor, a wife and a mother. When you had to choose between your own life and the child in your womb, you chose for your child to live.
Pray for mothers who are expecting, especially those in danger or afraid. May mother and child both be kept safe.
Pray for doctors and nurses, that they may treasure every life. And help my family welcome every baby as a gift from God.
Amen.
Sources
- Feast dayAuthor’s edited profile
- Patron ofPatronages and symbols, version 1.1
- Often depicted withPatronages and symbols, version 1.1
- Reflectionsantuariosantagianna.it
- Reflectiongiannaberettamolla.org
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Journey 2