The Son of a Saint

Over the summer, I had the honour of interviewing Pierluigi Molla, the eldest child of St. Gianna Beretta Molla who was canonized by John Paul II in 2004.

An edited version has now been published in the Register. Below is the full interview:

Canonized in 2004, St. Gianna Beretta Molla is one of the Church’s very rare lay saints. She rejected the possibility of having an abortion and gave her life instead to save that of her fourth child, Gianna Emanuela. Her heroic example led her to become a patron saint of the unborn, and she has a growing devoted following worldwide – reports of miracles and graces granted through her intercession continue to this day.

An interview with St. Gianna’s first child, Pierluigi, a business consultant based in Milan, in which he reflects on his mother’s example, what it’s like to be the son of a saint, and what St. Gianna would make of the struggle against abortion in the world today.

Although you were only five when your mother died, could you tell us more about her character and faith, perhaps which you came to know through your father?

As you said, when she died I was only five, but I do remember some episodes: she taught me how to ski and also I remember going with her when she went on visits as a doctor. My mother was close to the family and to her profession. At that time in the 1950s it was not common for women to have a family and also be involved in a profession, to be a doctor, and to be active helping people in associations such as Azione Cattolica [Catholic Action] and San Vincenzo [St. Vincent de Paul Society]. But at the same time, she was someone modern who liked to go skiing in the mountains, and liked music.

She lived a very full life?

A full life and also a modern one compared to the average way of life at that time. So these are my memories of my mother. Also I learned from her the faith that she transmitted to us - a trust in Providence, that you have to be committed to the values you hold. These things my father also passed on to us. Also I was able to learn about her life through the documents she left us. She left a lot of documents about her work with Azione Cattolica, and through these documents you can really understand her.

Quotes from your mother have been remembered for posterity, such as "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." "God's Providence is in all things, it's always present." What’s the most important thing we can learn from her?

As Catholics we need to learn how to be coherent with our values and beliefs. My mother grew up in a family where she received the faith and values from her father and mother, and how to live life in a correct way. She was coherent in these values which she learned in the first years of her life, and she was coherent to the end. The second thing is to be coherent with your vocation. She once thought of leaving Italy to work in Brazil with my aunt. But she understood that her vocation was to be a mother. And, as well as being coherent with her values in her role as a mother, she also strived to be coherent in work as a doctor, and as a volunteer.

In many ways she addresses how important upbringing is, and how vital it is to be brought up properly and the faith

Yes definitely, but not only as a mother. During her time working for Azione Cattolica, a colleague of hers said she rarely did not practice what she preached. My mother would not just say you have to do this or that, she really did it. It was the same in the family and in her choice to be a mother. She was an example for us; consistent in what she believed and what she passed on to the family. She said she wanted to have a holy family and she did everything she could to be lead this holy family towards being coherent in its faith.

What is it like to be the son of a saint?

It is an extraordinary experience. Hard to imagine. What happened to the family during all the beatification and canonization processes wasn’t easy because one has to constantly recall each time the pain of her death. The beatification process meant coming back to a painful moment in my life. As you can imagine, I was only five years old and when you lose your mother at that age, it’s about the worst kind of pain that any child can experience. But at the end of the beatification process in 1994 I was compensated by seeing my mother elevated to the altars. The same thing happened in 2004 at the canonization. Now I am 53 years old. But it really was an extraordinary experience and now I feel very happy that, through the Church, I can celebrate my mother on All Saints Day instead of being sad for her the day after, on All Souls Day. So the transformation to being a saint means that now, if you remember her life, you have a feeling of happiness instead of sadness.

For me and for my sister it’s been extraordinary because what happened to us is not common. I don’t know if we are the first, but it’s really an uncommon experience to see this happen when alive, also for my father. My father is still alive and aged 97. He was with us in St. Peter’s in 2004 for the canonization of his wife. So it’s been an extraordinary experience but probably we’re not the first and only ones. We hope not, because this is a contemporary message, a really great message for the Church: how contemporary people living everyday lives can become saints. Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini said my mother is the saint of everyday life. She shows that saints can be people living ordinary lives, not extraordinary ones. For this reason, we are all ordinary people. Admittedly, my mother was an extraordinary and heroic woman, but in every ordinary things of her life she showed herself just to be living an ordinary life. My father had an extraordinary relationship with my mother. They were together for just five years but are still together.

It must be very consoling for you to have your mother as a saint because you know for sure that she is alive, that she lives on, showing it through interceding in miracles after she died.

Definitely yes, this is a great consolation. It’s also really wonderful to see how the knowledge of my mother is spreading around the world, and how many messages we’ve received from all over the globe testifying to what she’s doing today. Because she’s mediating a lot of graces. Miracles are something recognized by the Church, but these are graces and they’re really extraordinary. Two years ago I received an email from the United States. A woman had problems conceiving a child, and at the end she had two wonderful children. One of them is called Gianna because she said a prayer to my mother. So this is extraordinary; it’s like she is with us and working for the whole world.

It may be the same person, but I also know a couple in America who were trying to have children but couldn’t and then together with their priest at the time, they prayed to your mother and now they have two young children.

Fantastic. It’s not only a rare occurrence; it happens frequently. There is a church close to Genoa with an old and famous shrine, Madonna della Guardia. A priest there put up a picture of my mother in the shrine 15 years ago, and it’s incredible how now it’s now completely full of pink and blue ribbons. This is an Italian tradition – to hang up these ribbons on the outside a house when a new child is born. This shrine is full of these kinds of messages, of graces received through my mother.

Could you tell us a little about Gianna Emanuela?

Gianna is a doctor and studied medicine like my mother. She is a geriatric specialist not a pediatric doctor like my mother. Now she is taking care of my father. Up until 6 years ago he was completely active, but six years ago he started having problems. So Gianna decided to leave her job in a public hospital to take care of him. She also helps to run my mother’s foundation. My father founded the foundation which is a family charity in honor of my mother, and various people write to it from all around the world, giving materials or asking for help. So Gianna is working for that. This is a good way I think to honor my mother and father. Up until six years ago all this was done by my father. He had been completely absorbed in this work over the past 15 years. Once he retired from his job he took care of all the necessities relating to the beatification and canonization causes. As you can imagine, and as I sad before, to be a family, to be a witness to a beatification is not only important but it also involves an immense amount of work. Traditionally, saints come from priestly orders or convents and so they have a lot of people working on these causes for free. But in a family we have to work hard, and also for free.

So it’s been a bit of a burden but a happy one?

Yes.

How does your sister Gianna Emanuela look upon what your mother did for her?

It is amazing. She was only with my mother six days but she received through us and my father a sense of what really happened. And yes, she’s completely grateful to my mother because through giving her life, she is here. But what my mother did for Gianna she would have done for me or my other sisters, because for my mother, Gianna has every right to live as we have.

When Sarah Palin was chosen to run as Vice President of the United States, some referred to your mother as an example of someone who could bring up her relatively large family in the Catholic faith and yet live a very professional and busy life. Are you happy with that comparison?

I didn’t know about this, about the comparison with Sarah Palin. I only know what I read in the papers. I think my mother showed at that time in the 1950s that it was possible for a woman to be coherent with her values and to do well in her life in terms of her profession and family. This is the example of my mother, but I don’t know if it’s really consistent with the life of Sarah Palin. It’s not only Sarah Palin but I think there are a lot of women and many other great saints of the Church who have shown how life can be sanctified through a profession. There’s St. Josemaria Escriva, for instance, who said you can be a good father, and also be sanctified through your profession. So my mother isn’t the only example in the Church of this kind of coherence and commitment to family and professional life. There are many examples.

It also depends on the person?

Yes, and on their experience and history. In my mother’s case, she was completely happy in her family and professional life. She was coherent with this principle and applied it to everything she wanted to do. One of my mother’s favorite expressions was to do everything in depth, not superficially, and not to stop and only do 50 percent. She wasn’t an extraordinary intellectual and at school she got average results. She was not a champion, but she tried her best.

Relaxed abortion laws mostly came into force in the western world after your mother died. Do you think she’d be campaigning against these laws if she were alive today?

She probably would be, as someone who was committed to Azione Cattolica. As someone who had to give a good example, who tried to be coherent in her commitment to her faith, she would have done everything she could to prevent an abortion from taking place. I think she would have also been committed to this in her job, to be coherent with this aspect of her faith. I saw in yesterday’s Corriere della Sera two pages devoted to a meeting between the Pope and Obama. The main aspect discussed was abortion, so it shows the real value these issues have at the highest level. Because if you agree with this kind of value, you must also be coherent in the policies you make. I was really surprised that Obama wanted to reduce abortion. In the last 10 years of presidential campaigns in the US, abortion has figured highly, so it is of real value.

Certainly my mother represented this value. My mother was a person who lived in the 1950s, died in 1962 and yet the message she left is still very current and topical. Not only in bioethics and abortion, but also in matters relating to the economy and moral values. If we agree on these values and every leader applies these principles to daily life, we can change the general situation.