“This time it will be a difficult delivery, and they may have to save one or the other – I want them to save my baby.” St. Gianna Berretta Molla spoke these words to her family during her fourth pregnancy. After discovering a fibroma on her uterus, Gianna decided to forgo the necessary treatment which would have secured her own health in order to give her unborn child a chance to live.

Born the tenth of thirteen children in Magenta, Italy in 1922, Gianna grew up as an active member of St. Vincent de Paul Society. She also loved mountain climbing and skiing. After earning two degrees in medicine and surgery, she opened a medical clinic near her hometown in 1950. She specialized in pediatrics at the University of Milan and loved serving mothers, babies, the elderly, and the poor. She met her husband Pietro during this time, and they married in 1955.

Gianna and Pietro had a beautiful marriage and family. Both Gianna and Pietro were deeply rooted in their love of Christ and that love overflowed into their marriage, their family, their jobs, and their community. Gianna and Pietro often exchanged letters while they were separated because of work trips. Their holy marriage was a model of Christ’s love for the Church.

In the second month of her fourth pregnancy, the doctors found a tumor on Gianna’s uterus. They gave her the legal option to abort her baby in order to perform a hysterectomy to save her life, but she refused. On April 21, 1962, Gianna gave birth to her daughter, Gianna Emanuela, via cesarean section. Although the doctors were unable to remove her tumor, she had complications after birth and suffered severe pain. Despite all efforts to save Gianna and her baby, on the morning on April 28, 1962, just seven days after giving birth, Gianna died of at age thirty-nine. In the last moments of tremendous agony, she kept repeating, “Jesus, I love you. Jesus, I love you.”

A brief thirty-two years later, Pope John Paul II beatified Gianna in 1994 and officially canonized her a Saint in 2004. Both Gianna’s husband, Pietro and daughter, Gianna Emanuela, attended her canonization ceremony, marking the first time a husband witnessed his wife’s canonization.

“We cannot love without suffering and we cannot suffer without love.”

• Pingel, Jana Zuniga. Humans of Heaven. January Jane Shop, 2023. Hardback, 167 pp.