Today we celebrate the feast day of Saint Gianna Beretta Molla and remember this day as the day she died in 1962. This modern day saint is a beautiful witness of love and sacrifice in a world that so desperately needs to know and experience true love.
Saint Gianna was an Italian physician and a devoted wife and mother. While pregnant with her fourth child, she developed a life-threatening complication. In order to save her life, doctors recommended that she have an abortion, but St. Gianna refused, insisting that doctors save the baby’s life instead. She gave birth to her daughter on April 21, 1962,
and died seven days later. She was canonized in 2004, and her husband and daughter attended the canonization ceremony. She is the patron saint of mothers, physicians, and preborn children.
In honor of St. Gianna’s feast day, here are five of her most inspirational quotes:
- “Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light. We cannot love without suffering and we cannot suffer without love.”
- “One earns Paradise with one’s daily task.”
- “The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all that He, in His goodness, sends to us day after day.”
- “In order to bring true peace back to my soul, the only way that there exists on the Earth is Confession, because Jesus awaits me with His immense heart.”
- “Our body is a cenacle, a monstrance: through its crystal the world should see God.”
Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, pray for us!
