Mary Pat’s Story
National Catholic Register: A Haven for Moms and Babies: St. Gianna & Petro Molla Maternity Home
Every day is different at the St. Gianna & Pietro Molla Maternity Home in Warsaw, North Dakota, according to Mary Pat Jahner, the maternity home’s director. Except for love. Love is part of every day.
Since the home’s founding in 2003, single mothers with unplanned pregnancies ranging in age from 12 to 39, their babies and sometimes older siblings, have come from near and far to find refuge in this tiny prairie hamlet of just 60 souls. Five miles from Minto with a population of 600 people, 30 miles north of Grand Forks, and 60 miles from the Canadian border, it is quiet and remote. But inside the walls of the home, it is bustling with life. Here, moms with nowhere else to go have found they belong.
“Those who come here are alone in the world,” Jahner told the Register. “It’s a hard situation. We have a lot of after-birth work, to help them for the long haul.” Moms can stay up to three years after the birth of their babies.
National Review: How Giving Mothers the Aid They Need Can Help End Abortion
Inspired by St. Gianna’s heroic love and defense of the unborn, I started a maternity home — now called the St. Gianna and Pietro Molla Maternity Home — in Warsaw, N.D., in 2004. From the beginning, it was evident that we were meeting a dire need.
Prior to starting St. Gianna’s, I’d often been sad when, as a high-school teacher, I watched numerous young girls forced into abortions — many driven to their abortion appointments by their own parents.
Troubled and unsure of how to address this tragic problem, I spent a summer volunteering at a Missionaries of Charity maternity home in Los Angeles, Calif. I assisted the holy nuns as they happily spent long, sometimes grueling hours tending to their patients’ needs, treating each poor soul like royalty. Their effervescent joy in selflessly serving the forgotten mirrored the love I admired in St. Gianna, and it solidified the deep longing in my heart to do the same for the women facing crisis pregnancies within my own community back home.
Peace Garden News: Former Resident: The Saint Gianna & Pietro Molla Maternity Home ‘Has Changed My Life and Given My Baby a Wonderful Start in Life”
While pro-life activists are engaged in the courts, the staff at the Saint Gianna & Pietro Molla Maternity Home continue to offer support for women who are experiencing crisis pregnancies. Founded in 2003, the home offers pregnant women of any age safe shelter, food, clothing, education, counseling and support as they pursue an alternative to abortion.
“I was going down a path that wasn’t good for me and especially not for my child. I was not sure where life was going to take me, but I knew that something needed to change. Thankfully, I was presented a few options or ways that could help me and my baby, and Saint Gianna’s was one of them,” according to a testimonial on the home’s website. “I didn’t know what a maternity home even was. However, the Gianna Home has changed my life and given my baby a wonderful start in life.”
According to a report in the National Catholic Register, since their founding in 2003, more than 300 women and children have lived at the home and most mothers have chosen to keep their babies. The remaining 20 babies were placed for adoption.
EWTN Pro-Life Weekly: Maternity Home in North Dakota Inspired by Gianna and Pietro Molla
EWTN Pro-Life Weekly’s Prudence Robertson takes an in depth look at the lifesaving, life-changing work of the St. Gianna and Pietro Molla maternity home in North Dakota. Mary Pat, the home’s founder, and several moms the home has helped share their stories.
