Painting donation

A concert to celebrate the inauguration of a painting of St Gianna Beretta Molla will take place at the Jesuit’s church, Valletta today at 8pm.

We are also donating this painting to honour St Gianna and also the thousands of women, in Malta and throughout the world, who, like St Gianna, choose to put the life of the baby first when choosing an intervention during difficulties in their pregnancies.

St Gianna had listened to the possible options suggested by her doctors and then made a moral choice based on her knowledge and beliefs, choosing the option which gave her baby the most likely chance of healthy survival. She never craved death but hoped that both she and her child would survive.

As such, she gave us a perfect model of how doctors and patients should collaborate together during a consultation; the doctor gives options, the patient chooses the option she considers most appropriate.

It is unfortunate, in Gianna’s case, that an unexpected complication subsequently led to her death.

Caterina Pacitti’s painting of St Gianna Beretta Molla.

I have made my contribution in the name of Rachael Ward, one of my students, who was also a devotee of St Gianna. She was a soprano in the Clare College Choir, Cambridge and also co-chair of the Fisher Society, at the Catholic Chaplaincy to the university.

Rachael died suddenly on Easter Tuesday, 2021. She had had three children and was still on maternity leave. Her choices in life, like her favourite St Gianna, were always determined by her deep Catholic faith. On the preceding Easter Saturday, she had sung in church I know that my Redeemer Liveth, her final public testament. Hers was a well-lived life taken maybe too soon for us who are left.

In 2014, she had visited Malta with the Clare College Choir and had sung an Ave Maria before the statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, in the Valletta basilica, presenting a bouquet of flowers.

I have realised that there was no shrine to St Gianna in Malta and I decided to make a donation towards one, and to do this in Rachael’s name. When I phoned her husband, Matthew, I found that he had decided to donate a statue of St Gianna in Rachael’s name to Corpus Christi church, Covent Garden, London. Amazingly, we had independently come up with the same idea.

Mathew is a musical director and composer and he has written a piece based on a prayer of St Gianna for this concert. It will be sung by Michaela Agius as a world premiere. I know that my Redeemer Liveth, Rachael’s final public testament, will be sung by Hannah Tong.

Mark Agius, rector, Confraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel – Valletta