St. Gianna Beretta Molla

Their story

Gianna Beretta was born in 1922 in Magenta, Italy, the tenth of thirteen children in a devout family. She studied medicine and became a physician, opening a clinic and caring especially for mothers, children, the elderly and the poor. She saw her work as a mission: to care for both body and soul. She was active in Catholic Action and loved skiing, mountain climbing, music and the arts. In 1955 she married Pietro Molla, an engineer, and they had three children. Her letters to Pietro are full of joy and tenderness. In 1961, two months into her fourth pregnancy, doctors found a large tumor in her uterus. She was offered options that would have ended the pregnancy. Gianna chose surgery to remove only the tumor so that her baby could live, knowing this put her own life at serious risk. She told her family and doctors that if a choice had to be made between her life and her child’s, they must save the baby. On April 21, 1962, Holy Saturday, her daughter Gianna Emanuela was born healthy. A week later, on April 28, Gianna died of complications at the age of thirty-nine. Pope St. John Paul II canonized her in 2004, with her husband and her daughter, who later became a physician herself, present.