One day Chiara Petrillo will be a saint, writes Paul Williams

A young Italian mother gives up her life for her unborn child in a stunning act of saintliness

Chiara Petrillo was a 28-year-old Italian mother who apparently refused life-saving cancer treatment that would have damaged or destroyed her baby.  Her baby, Francesco, was born perfectly well.  Chiara died.

Chiara’s funeral took place a few days ago in Rome.  But Francesco was not her first baby.  Her first, Maria, was found in the womb to be terribly disabled.  Chiara and her husband Enrico refused repeated advice to abort Maria.  The baby lived for 30 minutes, and was baptised, loved and mourned.  Chiara and Enrico’s next baby, David, was found in the womb to have no legs.  Further complications followed and once more he died soon after birth, cherished, loved and celebrated to the end.  Then Chiara became pregnant with Francesco.  Chiara was found in the fifth month to have cancer, but she would not accept any treatment that would harm her baby.  Sometimes love is like that.

. . . It makes absolutely no sense from most secular points of view to approve of her actions.  How can she kill herself to save the life of a foetus.  The foetus is, after all, replaceable.  Through her own survival she could have had many more babies.  Francesco was not (yet) a lovable person.  One cannot – or should not – love a foetus with a love that will willingly accept one’s own death in exchange for its survival.  And, of course, death is the end, the final “beyond which nothing”.  So it seems likely from a secular perspective that bringing about one’s own death for a replaceable “it” cannot ever be morally justified.

. . . No, it is only for a particular type of Christian that Chiara’s story is one of supremely inspiring triumph.  That Christian is the one who has a non-negotiable trust in God and who has complete moral certainty, a Christian who knows what they need to do and who submits themselves to it.  Such a Christian sees nothing intrinsically frightening in death.  And it is the Christian who really accepts holiness as our calling, who needs and welcomes the heroic example that saints give us, and who recognises the actions of God in bringing forth saints for His Church, who will celebrate the story of Chiara, Enrico, Maria, David and Francesco.

We are almost overwhelmed in this story not by death but by life.  When we watch Chiara talking about her decisions on YouTube what we see is bubbling joy.  Of course, she would rather none of this had happened to her and her family.  But in following the heroic way, the way of the saint, we can see in Chiara’s face and her smile (she was a Franciscan, incidentally) the presence of the Holy Spirit.  We see the Spirit that with all the pain of our human situation also gives life, and gives joy, and brings abundant life and joy out of suffering.

. . . She was buried in her wedding gown, on her way to her Divine Spouse but also, she said, on her way to her two lovely and so much loved earlier babies.

At a time when the Church is constantly under scrutiny and attack by its enemies and all too often by its friends as well, urging that the Church’s very survival depends on following some latest fad or fashion, Chiara Petrillo shows too that (in Tertullian’s famous saying) the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Christians.  For she is a saint and a martyr, a witness.  The survival of the Church lies not in fashionable accommodation.  It lies in God.

Chiara Petrillo shows wonderfully well the way God brings forth for us the saints and martyrs that we need in our day.  When young girls, often very young girls, use abortion as “emergency contraception” and when young women have been known to get pregnant and then abort the baby just to “check that everything is working properly”, Chiara Petrillo, who would literally die rather than hurt her baby-foetus, is a saint for our times.

Carissima Chiara, prega per noi.

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