A report on the recent death (3 April) in Milan of Pietro Molla at the age of 97 has largely been missed by most of the media, including religious press services. We read the news in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano (14 April).
Who was Pietro Molla? Why is his passing so newsworthy? The answer to such questions is astonishing, especially because of our highly secularized world. The answer is that Pietro’s wife, Dr. Gianna, is already a canonized saint – the very last saint raised to the honors of the altar by Pope John Paul II in 2004.
This narrative is probably too difficult even for some Catholics to process intellectually, chiefly because the world is so permeated with secularism, materialism and moral relativism. The premisses underlying the facts seem incomprehensible to our contemporary scene.
Gianna Beretta, a physician and a mother of three, died on Holy Saturday 1962, just a week after giving birth to a third child, owing to a grave medical condition associated with her pregnancy. Like her husband, Dr. Gianna exemplified extraordinary virtue; back in March 1955, Pietro wrote about his wife in his diary: "The more I know Gianna, the more I am convinced that God could not have given me a greater gift than her love and companionship." He was at her side, of course, when she died after giving birth to Gianna Emanuela, who eventually followed her mother in the medical vocation.
A family friend, Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, who directs the Salt and Light Catholic Television Network in Canada, was with the Molla family – led by the three Molla children – Dr. Gianna Emanuela, Pierluigi and Laura – during Pietro’s final days in this life. Father Rosica had known the family for 11 years, and had literally guided them during the incomparable days prior to Dr. Gianna’s canonization, when he was asked to help Pietro to prepare spiritually for the canonization of his wife! (Again, how can we even begin to process this magnificently sacred story? How?)
In attempting to comprehend the enduring meaning of Pietro Molla’s death, several powerful lessons can be learned.
One, obviously, is that, according to God’s plan, woman is – in Pope John Paul II’s words – "the one in whom the order of love in the created world of persons takes first root." This order of love "belongs to the intimate life of God himself, the life of the Trinity… Love, which is of God, communicates itself to creatures…" (Apostolic Letter, Mulieris Dignitatem, Sec. 29; 1988)
Consequently, John Paul wrote, "the calling of woman into existence at man’s side as ‘a helper fit for him (Gen 2:18), in the unity of the two,’ provides the visible world of creatures with particular conditions, so that ‘the love of God may be poured into our hearts…’" (Ibid., Sec. 27; cf. Eph 5:21-33)
Obvious too, is the lesson given us and the world concerning marriage, which, in theologian William E. May’s words, constitutes "the rock on which the family is built" (title and preface, Ignatius Press, 1995). Marriage itself, writes Professor May, is "a Person-affirming, Love-enabling, Life-giving, and Sanctifying Reality." (Ibid., Intro., p 12) And the family was meant by God to be a sanctifying dynamic and a domestic Church. (Cf. Evangelium Vitae, Encyclical, Pope John Paul II, 1995.)
Catholic doctrine, as articulated by John Paul, was summarized many times over by one of the most eloquent poets of Christian marriage in the English tongue; namely, Coventry Patmore (d. 1896). In Patmore’s ever "blessedly popular epic," Angel in the House, he has his persona declare his own love for his wife: "I loved her in the name of God, /And for the ray she was of Him." Patmore, truly the "consecrated laureate of wedded love," helped crystallize in poetry the ancient Christian nuptial tradition lived by Pietro and St. Gianna Molla.
There is still another lesson to be gleaned from the story of the Molla family. It is that human life, intended by God to be conceived and born into the family, is to be treasured as a special gift from God, who alone can give human life. St. Gianna was both a wife and a mother; her husband, Pietro, was both a husband and a father. Their home was unquestionably an Ecclesiola; namely, a "little church," in which their three children first learned of God’s love through their parental love. (Who else but a parent is assigned by God to help a child read his or her first words from Holy Scripture? Who else is allowed by the Lord to lead a child to Sunday Mass? Who else is privileged by the Lord to begin preparing a child for first Communion? All these questions are first answered in the "little church" that is the home.) In a sense, parenthood is somewhat analogous to priesthood. The New Testament, after all, was inaugurated not in the Temple, but in a home, a home with a dining room, with a symbolic family gathered around the Son of God Incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth.
The world today is rapidly moving in the wrong direction as regards human sexuality, marriage and the family. We need dramatic reminders of the only correct course in this area. The family of St. Gianna and Pietro Molla is a sign which we all need to mark – not reject or ignore, much less ridicule, alongside a confused, "politically" and "socially incorrect" march toward oblivion.
