St. Peter’s Square witnessed a rare and refreshing sight on 16 May, 2004. A man and his 4 children were present at the canonization of his wife and their mother, Saint Gianni Beretta Molla. Thousands of ordinary housewives celebrated the occasion in solidarity with their own saint of the “pots and the pans”.

Saint Gianni Beretta Molla was a simple woman with profound spiritual depth. Drawing on the Ignatian Exercises, she found God in her family as a housewife and in her medical work as a lay person by joining the St. Vincent de Paul’s Group. “Life is a gift, a precious gift that deserves reverence,” she maintained.

She rose to prominence with her pro-life decision during her fourth pregnancy. Even when she developed a fibroma in her uterus, she refused both abortion and hysterectomy despite the principle of “double effect”. She chose surgery despite the risk to her life. After she gave birth to a girl, she developed peritonitis and passed away on 28 April, 1962. She was beatified in 1994.

In 2015, there was a World Meeting of Families presided by Pope Francis in which the Saint’s fourth child, Dr. Giannina Emanuela inaugurated the occasion with a letter her mother wrote to her father before marriage about the ‘Sacrament of Love’. Today, her daughter carries her torch and specializes in geriatrics keeping her mother’s work in mind. May be Jivan magazine too has found its patron saint since ‘Jivan’ means life!

“The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all that He sends us day after day.”

“One earns Paradise with one’s daily task.”

Jerry Fernandez, SJ

The author is an XLRI Alumnus and currently Asst. Parish Priest at St. Xavier’s College Parish, Ahmedabad.