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ST. RAPHAEL ACADEMY

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHINGS: GIANNA BERETTA MOLLA

A PAPER IN FAITH AND VALUES IN A MEDIA CULTURE PREPARED FOR MR. MICHAEL M. LAVIGNE RELIGIOUS STUDIES DEPARTMENT

By

AUSTEN HAYNES

April 28, 2008

Gianna Beretta Molla was born on October 4, 1922. She was very religious and had a Christian education. She saw life as a gift from God. She became a member of the St. Vincent de Paul and actively did charitable work among the elderly. She went to the University of Milan and specialized in Pediatrics in 1952. She chose the vocation of marriage and dedicated herself “to forming a truly Christian family”. In September 1961 towards the end of the second month of her fourth pregnancy, she had developed a fibroma in her uterus.

Gianna had the chance to save her own life, but realized that the operations she would have to go through would kill the child that she was carrying. She decided to refuse the operations to save her child’s life. She trusted in God and prayed that the child would not be born in pain. Her child was born on the morning of April 21, 1962. Seven days later the mother died at the age of 39.

Gianna Beretta Molla’s dedication to saving her child is an example of living out the Catholic Social Teaching of the sanctity of human life and the dignity of the person. The teaching of the sanctity of human life teaches acts such as abortion and euthanasia are considered attacks on vulnerable human life. It also teaches that human life should be valued over everything, and that you should not destroy it.

If Gianna would have accepted the operations, she would not have been held accountable for her child’s death because her life was threatened from the condition she was in. If a pregnant woman’s life is in danger, and the only way to save it is to have an operation that would kill the child, the woman has the right in the Catholic Church to perform the operation.

Personally, if it was someone I knew, I would not want them to kill themselves to save the kid inside them, but Gianna had her mind set that her child was a gift from God and she had to do everything in her power to save it. She made the ultimate sacrifice to do what she thinks is the right thing to do.