Raised to the altar: 'A mother has finally arrived'">
On Sunday morning, Pope John Paul II will canonize six more saints, bringing the total number of men and women raised to "glory of the altar" to nearly 500 people. He has already beatified more than 1,300 men and women over the past quarter of a century. In addition to the traditional grouping of priests, nuns and a Lebanese Maronite monk, Sunday's line-up includes a young Italian lay woman, Gianna Beretta Molla, a pediatrician and mother who died in 1962 at the age of 39, leaving behind her husband and four young children.
In September, 1961, toward the end of the second month of pregnancy with her fourth child, Dr. Molla had to make a heroic decision. Physicians diagnosed a serious fibroma in the uterus that required surgery. The surgeon suggested that she undergo an abortion in order to save her own life. A few days before the child was due, she was ready to give her life in order to save that of her child: "If you must decide between me and the child, do not hesitate: Choose the child - I insist on it. Save the baby." She gave herself entirely, generating new life.
In various parts of the world, the media and others are having a hey day in debunking and politicizing the Gianna story, stating that her canonization is the Roman Catholic Church's full frontal attack on pro-choice people and all who support abortion. To reduce her life and vocation to "the first anti-abortion saint" is to misread her powerful story. The church doesn't beatify or canonize people and use them as arrows or weapons to attack others for error and sin.
Rather, the church offers the lives of outstanding women and men such as Gianna to present an alternative gospel vision to what we are enduring in the world today. Saints offer us a way to put the Beatitudes into practice on a daily basis. They are models who inspire and guide us.
For many Vatican watchers, Dr. Molla is not the typical candidate for one of the Vatican's most impressive ceremonies and most significant honours. Gianna loved culture, fashion and beauty. She played piano, was a painter, enjoyed tennis, mountain climbing and skiing. She attended the symphony, theatre and Milan's La Scala Opera. Gianna also loved to travel. She loved children, the elderly and the poor.
What is even more unique about her story is that on Sunday, her husband, Pietro, and three of the four children (the third daughter died in childhood) will be sitting in the front rows to witness an extraordinary moment in their family and in the life of their church. In an age when permanent commitment is widely discouraged, when human life is cheap and disposable and family life is under siege, when abortion is all too available, when sacrifice and virtue are absent in so many lives; when, I would argue, many in the medical profession have little concern for the dignity and sacredness of every human life; when suffering is seen as a nuisance without any redemptive meaning; when goodness, joy, simplicity and beauty are suspect; Gianna Beretta Molla shows this world, gripped by a culture of death, an alternative gospel way of compelling beauty.
Her action at the end of her life, in saving young Gianna Emanuela, her daughter, was heroic in that she prepared for her final action every day of her life. Her final decision for life was the natural flowering and culmination of an extraordinary life of virtue and holiness, selflessness and quiet joy. St. Gianna Molla continues to remind the church and the world of the necessity of a consistent ethic of life, from the earliest to the final moments of human life.
We are being called to heroism by our choice of life on a daily basis. Gianna Beretta Molla is certainly not the first laywoman and mother to be canonized, but her contemporary witness is badly needed by so many people around the world today. In the simple words of one of St. Gianna's closest friends, Piera Fontana, "50 years ago, before Gianna, how was it possible that only nuns, priests and friars were raised to the altar? Why were we never raised to the altar? Gianna was raised to the altar. She represents all mothers. A mother has finally arrived."
Father Thomas Rosica is chief executive officer of the Salt + Light Catholic Media Foundation.
