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Gianna Beretta Molla
Gesiel Junior of the Brazilian SVDP wrote this appreciation of Gianna Beretta Molla who was canonized one year ago by the late Pope john Paul II. (Translation from the Portugues by Amelia Bonfim.)
For quite a long time, saints and beatified people were seen as almost unreacheable characters, people we could never, or very rarely, get at. It seemed that only the efforts and deeds of the Apostles and those who had suffered martyrdom, or yet those of some legendary examples as Saint Francis of Assis, Saint Tereza d’Avila and Saint Vincent of Paul, were recognized and duely valued.
Nevertheless, Pope John-Paul II, during his pontificate, brought along innovation when he took to the altars people who are still alive in the contemporary memory, people whose husbands, wives and children are still among us. This is precisely what happened to Gianna Beretta Molla, canonized on May 16th, 2004.
For Vincentians, this mother who is a model of the intense love of living, has something in commun with us, and something very special: she was a member of the Saint Vincent of Paul Society and is now the first of our members to have become a saint.
This, by the way, well illustrates that saints are people of our time, people we know, people we perhaps share part of our lives with. Maybe people we meet everyday, our next door neighbours…
A beautiful girl of Milanene origin, Gianna entered a Vincentian Conference in the Forties, in Italy. This is demonstrated by a new unpublished document kindly sent to us by her youngest daughter, Geriatrician Gianna Emanuela Molla. Still a student, attracted by Frederique Ozanam’s ideals, Gianna worked in order to help the poor. She made charity the goal of her life. She was a very meticulous secretary while working for the Conference of Saint Martin, Magenta Parish, as one can tell by the minutes she wrote down in 1943.
John Paul II reminds us that the call for saintity does not exclude anyone, nor is it a privilege of a spiritual elite. According to the Pope, a saint is an ordinary human being, a doctor, a young student, a nun who had previously been a slave, a priest, a couple, a catechist.
Gianna was such a person. A very active laywoman, a very good student, a paediatrician, a wife and a mother. Most of all, she was a true woman, a joyful housewife, who loved wearing a pair of trousers, travelling and skiing with her children. Therefore, she became a saint in the simplicity of her everyday life, by the loving complying of her duty.
Her way of living appeals (see her biography hereafter), calls out for us, draws us along with her because it is the pure manifestation of a transparent humain experience, filled with the presence of Christ Himself.
The life of this courageous Vincentian member is a magnificient lesson that should be learned and followed by all the members of the Saint Vincent of Paul Association. Her extreme loving care – not easily understandable by this ever more unchristian world – gets its full meaning when we grasp what she tried to convey in one of her best pages, a message that completely summarizes her reason to live and love: “Charity is the most beatiful feeling God has put in the humain soul”.
With Gianna we can learn that saintity is not a gift spared for just a few ones.We can also try and reach for it, since saintity is an attainable goal for us all.
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Saint Gianna Beretta Molla – April, 28th
A martyr of maternal love
Born in the Italian town of Magenta, near Milan, on October, 4th 1922, Gianna was the youngest of twelve brothers and sisters. Her father, Alberto Beretta, was a cashier. Her mother, Maria De Micheli, used to attend mass everyday and took her daughter Gianna to receive Communion for the first time when she was only five and a half years old. Very early in her life, Gianna wholeheartedly greets the Christian faith, which helped her see life as a marvellous gift from God, totally trust Providence and correctly value and charish the need and the power of prayer.
During school and university years, young Gianna ties her faith to a generous apostolic engagement among the Youth of the Catholic Action, as well as to charitable service of the Vincentian Conference for the elderly and the poor.
By that time, she envisaged entering consecrated life, as some of her brothers had done. She plans to become a missionary in Brazil.
In 1949, Gianna gets her degree in Medicine from the University of Pavia, and, the following year, she starts her practice in Mesero. She then specializes in paediatrics and, among her patients, a special attention is always given to mothers, children, the elderly and the poor. She reckoned her job to be a real “mission”. Thanks to her prayers, she decides to choose the marital vocation so that she could “constitute a real christian family”;
She gets engaged to an engineer, Pedro Molla. She chearfully prepares herself for the wedding. The ceremony takes place on September, 24th 1955, in Saint Martin’s Basilica, in Magenta. She becomes a very happy woman. In November 1956, she already is the radiant mother of Pedro Luis; in December 1957, Maria Rita is born; then, in July 1959, Laura. In a very simple and balanced way, Gianna combines her duties as a mother, a wife and a doctor.
In September 1961, during the last days of her second month of pregnancy, Gianna is hurt by suffering and pain. Its a fibroma in her womb. She is then presented with three options: total removal of her ill womb, which would cause the child’s death, abortion of the foetus, or, the most dangerous solution, undergo a very risky surgery to try and keep the pregnancy.
Before the surgery takes place, conscious of the extreme danger she was facing, Gianna begs the surgeon to rescue the life she carries in her womb, and, then, she hands her own life to the Divine Providence and starts to pray. After the surgery, which was successful, she endows in thanking God for having preserved her child’s life. The following seven months, while waiting for labour, she goes on living, driven by strong determination, always fulfilling her duties as a mother and a doctor, with great devotion. She fears nevertheless for her child’s health. She prays God her baby will not be born with a fragile constitution or handicapped.
A few days before giving birth, moved as always by her strong trust in the Providence, Gianna shows she is determined to sacrifice her own life in order to rescue her baby. She says to her husband: “Pedro! Do not hesitate! Should you ever have to choose between saving my life or my child’s, I demand you rescue my baby! In this way, I shall have made God’s will and God will provide for my children”.
April, 21st 1962. Morning. In the Monza hospital, Gianna Emanuela is born. Despite all the efforts made in order to save both their lives, in great pain, Gianna the mother dies, the death of a saint, constantly repeating “Jesus, I love you, I love you”. She was 39. Her funeral was a strong popular manifestation of profound commotion, faith and prayer. She was buried in the Mesero Cemetery, near Milan.
In 1994, The International Year of the Family, Gianna was beatified. Last year, after the notification in Brazil that two miracles had been attributed to her during the canonization procedure, the Pope declares Gianna a saint in a very emotional ceremony that took place in Rome, in the presence of her husband and children. In his homely, in this very ceremony, John Paul II vigorously underlined: “The eternal sacrifice that sealed her life is a testimony to the fact that only those who have the courage to totally give themselves to God and to their bothers are capable of real fulfilment. May our times discover again, through the example of Gianna Beretta Molla, the beauty of pure, chaste and fecund marital love, lived as an answer to Divine call !”
(Gesiel Junior)
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