St Gianna was the medical doctor (Pediatrician) who, finding herself pregnant with her 4th child, also found she had a cancerous tumor in her womb.  She was advised to abort the child (this was 1962 but in Italy) and she refused to do so.  "The child must come first - save my baby" she told the doctors.  So carefully, they removed the tumor and her baby grew to full term and was born, an adorable girl whom they named Gianna.  Her mother only got to hold her for a few days - St Gianna died in intense pain about 8 days after little Gianna was born.  Gianna the daughter is, like her mother was, a doctor and also, with her Dad, was present at the canonization ceremony for St Gianna, held last May 2004.

That's the Holy card picture but a TV show on EWTN which showed movies of the Molla family and interviewed Gianna's husband and kids, gave us a rare insight into what it must have been like to live with a saint when she was a "work in progress".

We saw the loneliness Gianna suffered when her husband spent long periods away from the family due to his work and how she wrote letters shyly suggesting it would be nice to see her husband more often.  When she died, did he suffer for years, knowing that he could have spent more time with her?  Probably...  we never know when those we love will be called back to God.

We saw Gianna, a busy lady, trying to be a fulltime mom AND a fulltime doctor. She must not have slept very much.  Juggling time like that is a difficult task and especially with a husband who is away so much.

We saw Gianna the daughter, the life saved by her mother's gift, a thin faced lady also a physician saying that they, the kids, suffered much growing up without their mother but she knew now (at the canonization) it was all worth it.

This was NOT the Holy Card image and it was a bit unsettling.  The family was also involved in the redemptive suffering which ended up in Gianna Molla becoming a saint. No one wants to think of the suffering and yet isn't that what taking up the Cross is all about?

Because of Gianna's generosity AND that of her family, she now reaches out to mothers all over the world.  They showed two of those women who had been touched by miracles after asking St Gianna to pray for them - one baby who developed naturally WITHOUT a placenta (a documented medical miracle), another mother who was dying from toxemia who was miraculously healed to raise her daughter.

Love has a price.  The ultimate price of absolute love was paid by Jesus when He died on the cross for us, a mystical act but also an act of great suffering, graphically portrayed in Mel Gibson's  "THE PASSION MOVIE".  St Gianna was about love as she followed in the footsteps of suffering and the cross of her Savior, Jesus. St Gianna, pray for us!