Blessed Benedetta: A life with pain is still a life worth living

Is a life with pain a life not worth living? Proponents of assisted suicide laws appear to think that’s often the case. For Canadians, mental illness has apparently become too great a pain to bear, and terminally ill people from all over the US can now go to Vermont to end their lives if they feel like it.

Every man, woman, and child experiences pain from time to time. One Italian woman, whose feast day is celebrated by the Catholic Church on January 23, helps us see how faith in Jesus Christ can transform even the most profound and constant pain.

Blessed Benedetta Bianchi Porro was born in 1936 in Dovadola, Italy, into a large and devout family. She was a happy child and beautiful little girl who loved reading and was an excellent student. But she knew great suffering from a young age.

Benedetta’s mother baptized her daughter immediately after she was born because she didn’t think the sickly child would survive. When Benedetta was three months old, she contracted polio. She recovered, but she suffered long-term side effects. For example, one of Benedetta’ legs never grew as long as the other, and she was forced to wear a medical brace to support her curved spine. She later needed a cane to walk as well. She was only thirteen years old when she realized that she was losing her hearing.

But Benedetta was a good, hard-working student, and she graduated from school and entered college at the age of seventeen despite her many physical challenges. In her studies, she quickly discovered a love for the field of medicine. She recognized the care of the sick as her life’s vocation and decided she wanted to become a doctor.

Benedetta had been teased about her disabilities by other students all her life. In college, one of her professors thought that the idea that a woman with so many physical limitations could have a medical career was ridiculous and impossible. One day, in front of the entire class, he lost his temper and shouted at her that a deaf woman could never be a doctor. Benedetta responded to that teacher with Christian patience and charity—and she learned to lip-read.

Despite her dedication and hard work, her studies were periodically interrupted by medical problems. Hospital stays, treatments, and recuperation time slowed her progress. But she aced her exams each time she was able to return to class.

Through her study of medicine, she diagnosed her own medical condition, a diagnosis that had eluded her doctors, as Von Recklinghausen’s disease. This disease caused tumors to grow throughout her nervous system, which led to her deafness. She also sadly learned that she would become blind and paralyzed as the disease progressed. Today, cancer treatments and other procedures are available for sufferers of Von Recklinghausen’s disease, but surgery was the only option at the time.

Multiple head surgeries were performed on Benedetta, but each one only slowed the progression of the disease. One of the surgeries dramatically worsened her condition when a surgeon accidentally cut a nerve, leaving her paralyzed on one side of her face.

Benedetta, very humanly, feared the pain of every one of her surgeries. As she gradually lost autonomy because of the disease, she grieved the end of her dream of being a doctor. But instead of becoming angry, bitter, or rebellious over all the things she could no longer do, she turned to God for help.

From the time she was small, Benedetta had relied on her faith in God during her trials. She had faithfully turned to the sacraments to give her strength even as a child. She also traveled to Lourdes on pilgrimage on two occasions, praying for a cure. On one trip, the woman in the bed next to her was indeed miraculously healed.

But Benedetta was not. She did her best to accept the gift of being a witness to that woman’s cure, but it was a struggle to not be disappointed that her own condition was unchanged.

By the end of her life, Benedetta was very limited in her ability to communicate. She was still able to speak, although weakly. Her left hand, inexplicably, did not become paralyzed, which allowed her to write messages to others. People could also finger-spell letters from sign language on one side of her face to communicate with her.

Benedetta never said that her life was easy—and she freely admitted that some days were very hard to bear—but she also told others that she had found great peace in God’s presence. Along with her daily sufferings, Benedetta also experienced spiritual ecstasies and a deep sense of being very close to God. That’s why her family and friends, rather than trying to avoid being around a woman in constant pain, found themselves seeking her out and even being consoled by her.

The night before Benedetta died, she thought the end was near and told her nurse that she was hoping for a sign from God. On the morning of January 23, 1964, her mother remarked to Benedetta that a white rose had opened in the family garden, a surprising event for January. Benedetta recognized the rose as a sign from a dream that she had had a few months ago. And she died that day.

Blessed Benedetta Porro’s life reminds us that suffering and pain do not deprive us of our humanity, our personality, our dreams, our gifts, our relationships, or even our ability to know joy and peace. More than that, she profoundly affected the lives of those who knew her. By her example, she continues to inspire those who suffer from disabilities, constant health problems, and frustrated vocation plans even today.

After all, the power of Blessed Benedetta’s personal witness is not limited by space and time for the simple reason that she united all the trials of her life to that ultimate model of human suffering: Jesus Christ. And His life, which was perfectly and painfully sacrificed for every man, woman, and child, was certainly worth living.