Catholics often consider members of the communion of saints to be members of their own families. Few of them, however, are blessed to actually have canonized saints among the members of their blood relatives.

Dr. Gianna Emanuela Molla is one of them. Her mother, Dr. Gianna Beretta Molla, was canonized on May 16, 2004, by Pope St. John Paul II, who defined her mother’s heroic witness to life as “a real song to life.”

To celebrate their parents’ 60th wedding anniversary on Sept. 24, the three remaining children of St. Gianna will be reuniting at the World Meeting of Families’ Congress to share a second-class relic of their sainted mother: her beautiful wedding dress. This relic, along with others, will be on display at the Cathedral-Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul Sept. 20-24. The cathedral will also have on display relics from Philadelphia’s beloved “hometown” saints and others.

Visitors to the cathedral-basilica will also be able to attend perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament during that week.

 

Heroic Mother

Gianna Molla was a physician, a working mother, professional woman and a loving wife. Like many women, Gianna longed to have many children, but suffered from difficult and painful pregnancies.

While pregnant with her fourth child, Gianna was diagnosed with a fibroid tumor that caused her great pain and which caused complications to her pregnancy and threatened the life of her child. She declined a hysterectomy that might have saved her own life and instead carried the baby to term. She died after giving birth to Gianna Emanuela, as a result of an infection of the lining of her abdomen.

Today, Dr. Gianna Emanuela Molla is a licensed geriatrician, who left her profession to care for her father, Pietro, until his death in 2010. She works full time for the St. Gianna Foundation.

 

Learn More

Pilgrims to Philadelphia will have a wealth of opportunities to learn more about St. Gianna Molla: Sept. 18, 6-9pm: The St. John Bosco Parish Center Library (215 E. County Line Rd., Hatboro, PA 19040) will be hosting a movie night featuring a movie about the life of St. Gianna; Sept. 24, 4:15-5:15pm: Attendees of the World Meeting of Families Congress can hear Dr. Gianna Emanuela Molla speak at the breakout session entitled “Out of the Depths I Cry to You, O Lord: The Heartbreak of Infertility”; Sept. 25, 7pm: Nativity of Our Lord Church (625 W. Street Rd., Warminster, PA 18974) will host “An Evening With Pierluigi Molla” (son of St. Gianna Molla), including a prayer service, veneration of the relics of St. Gianna and a talk by Pierluigi.

 

St. Gianna’s Prayer

Jesus, I promise you to submit myself to all that you permit to befall me.

Make me only know your will.

My most sweet Jesus, infinitely merciful God, most tender Father of souls,

and in a particular way of the most weak, most miserable, most infirm,

which you carry with special tenderness between your divine arms,

I come to you to ask you, through the love and merits of your Sacred Heart,

the grace to comprehend and to do always your holy will,

the grace to confide in you,

the grace to rest securely through time and eternity in your loving, divine arms.

 

INFORMATION

For more information on the medical circumstances of St. Gianna’s pregnancies and death, read this wonderful article written by Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D.

 

 

 

Diana von Glahn is producer

and host of EWTN’s The Faithful

Traveler (TheFaithfulTraveler.com).

She will cover the World Meeting of Families

for the Register.