My wife and I have always had a devotion to St. Gianna Molla, the courageous Italian mother who died after refusing to have her fourth child aborted. She is the unofficial patron saint of pro-life work, and we often (and still do) pray for her intercession in our work against abortion.

This past week, her daughter Laura Molla, was in DC for a Eucharistic Congress. Catholic News Service interviewed her on what it is like to have a canonized saint for a mother:

“We had to work through the shock of losing our mother to find the joy in knowing she is a mother for all,” Molla told Catholic News Service Sept. 11, the day before she addressed participants at a eucharistic congress at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington sponsored by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. The theme of the Sept. 11-12 congress was “Sacrifice of Enduring Love”…

Molla described the canonization ceremony as beautiful and full of “a lot of happiness.” But what pleased her most about it was that her father, who had been sick, was able to attend.

She has self-proclaimed her 97-year-old father as a saint, saying through an interpreter: “Faith overflows in my father.”

She said her father never realized he was “living next to a saint,” and her mother didn’t realize it either.

Molla said her mother was convinced of her call to the vocation of marriage and “lived that until the end” — a commitment that Molla hopes will be an example to others.

“She teaches us to truly discern” what our vocation should be, she said, and then to “live that vocation to the fullest”…

As she sees it, her mother’s decision nearly 50 years ago was not an isolated choice. She told participants at the eucharistic congress Sept. 12 that her mother’s action was “the crowning of a whole life of virtue, a life lived constantly in the light of the Gospel as a young woman, physician, spouse and mother.”

When she hears people question the choice to leave behind three children in order to give birth to a fourth, Molla insists her mother was convinced her unborn child had the same right to live as her other children.

“She did not choose death” but “at that moment she chose the life of her child.”

The 20th century saw some of the most horrific evil ever conceived: Nazi Germany, Atheistic Communism, mass legalized abortion, and rampant materialism are just a few examples. Yet God also raised up some incredible saints to respond to those evils, including Pope Pius X, Maximilian Kolbe, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Padre Pio, Gianna Molla and Josemaria Escriva. Let we who live in the 21st century aspire to be like these great modern saints.

St. Gianna, pray for us!

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