Patronage
4 saints are venerated as patrons of Mothers, led by Gianna Beretta Molla (feast day April 28).
1922 — 1962 · Feast day: April 28
A pediatrician, wife, and mother who treated her career and family as a unified vocation. When doctors discovered a fibroid tumor on her uterus during her fourth pregnancy in 1961, she chose the option that preserved the baby — surgical removal of the fibroma — explicitly asking that her child's life be saved above her own. She died of septic peritonitis one week after giving birth.
1st century BC (traditional) — 1st century BC (traditional) · Feast day: July 26
Anne, mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus, endured twenty years of childlessness before an angel promised her a daughter. She vowed to dedicate the child to God and fulfilled that vow by presenting Mary at the Temple in Jerusalem at age three. Venerated across Eastern and Western Christianity, she is a patron of mothers, grandmothers, and those longing for children.
Approx. 182 AD — March 7, 203 AD · Feast day: March 7
Vibia Perpetua was a young noblewoman of Roman Carthage who chose death over apostasy in 203 CE, leaving behind an infant son and a prison diary that ranks among the earliest surviving Christian writings by a woman. She and her enslaved companion Felicity were attacked by a wild heifer in the arena on March 7; Perpetua, mortally wounded, guided the gladiator's trembling hand to finish her execution.
Unknown — March 7, 203 AD · Feast day: March 7
Felicity was an enslaved African woman who gave birth in a Roman prison cell and was executed in the amphitheater at Carthage days later. Her bond with the noblewoman Perpetua, and their shared death on March 7, 203 AD, became one of the early Church's most powerful testimonies to the radical equality of faith.