Though only steps away at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore, Monsignor James Farmer arrived late to a luncheon in his honor at the Catholic Center Oct. 18. The longtime pro-life advocate had remained at the basilica to celebrate a baptism for a family friend just minutes after receiving the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Culture of Life Medal of Honor during the annual Life is Beautiful Mass.
“Despite his retired status, he is so busy,” Collin Kourtz, director of the Office of Life, Justice and Peace within the archdiocesan Institute for Evangelization, said while recognizing him at the end of the luncheon.
A former Baltimore City public defender before answering the call to the priesthood, Monsignor Farmer served as the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s pro-life director from 1979 to 1989. He has also spent decades supporting pro-life pregnancy centers and the respect life movement throughout the region. His approach has been to persuade rather than provoke when helping people recognize the dignity of all life.
The priest was honored with the Pro-Life Award from Pregnancy Center North in 2021 and the Man for All Seasons Award from the St. Thomas More Society in 2013, but until this year he had not received the archdiocesan Culture of Life Medal of Honor.
Kourtz noted that when nominations for the award were being considered, Monsignor Farmer’s name came up several times. However, many assumed he had already received the recognition because he was the “most obvious choice.”
“It has been decades overdue,” Kourtz said.
In an interview with the Catholic Review, Monsignor Farmer called life “a sacred gift.”
“It is endangered in so many areas right now,” he said. “We have to preserve. The grace of God is our strength. He will convey.”
Dr. Gianna Emanuela Molla received the archdiocesan 2026 Life is Beautiful award and was the featured speaker at the luncheon. She is the daughter of St. Gianna Beretta Molla, the Italian physician and mother who, during her final pregnancy, chose a treatment that preserved her unborn child’s life despite the increased risk to her own health.
Molla “has dedicated her life,” said Auxiliary Bishop Adam Parker in his homily at the Mass, “to making her saintly mother and father known, especially their witness of the Catholic faith and defending the dignity of human life.”
In her comments at the luncheon, Molla shared the story of her parents’ love for each other, for God and for their family. When her mother, who was a physician, discovered she had a “huge fibroid” during her pregnancy with Molla, her mother had several options, Molla said, and she chose the riskiest – to remove “the fibroid only and to continue the pregnancy.”
“My dad respected my mom’s decision,” Molla said. “A few days before my delivery, she talked to my dad. ‘Pietro, if you ever have to decide between me and the baby, do not hesitate to choose’, and then demanded, ‘the baby, do save the baby.’”
While her parents, she said, prayed for God to save both Molla’s and her mother’s lives, “God’s will was different.” Her mother was called to “paradise” a week later.
“My birth crowned her holiness,” Molla said, though she suffered a “sense of guilt” in her childhood as her three siblings “suffered more than me because I never saw my mom.”
Her dad, she said, never saw her as the “child who took away from him his adored spouse.”
“He welcomed me since the very beginning in a wonderful way,” Molla said, telling her, “Gianna, what your mom did for you, she would have done in the same way for your siblings. For her, you have the same right to life as your siblings who were already born.”
Molla, a former geriatrician in Italy, retired to take care of her father full-time until his death in 2010. She now travels around the world speaking about her parents’ “powerful testimony to the faithful, enduring and life-giving love of marriage.”
“Their testimony inspires hope and renewed commitment to the family as the foundation of the life of all society,” Molla said.
Linda Hanna, a parishioner of the basilica, thought it “was absolutely beautiful” to hear Molla speak.
“It inspired me to be a better mother and to appreciate life even more,” Hanna said. A retired nurse, she has “always respected life” and when they wanted her to do abortions as a student, she would not.
“This was just beautiful for respecting life,” Hanna said, of the Mass and luncheon. “Monsignor (Farmer) has been my pastor forever, since St. Thomas Aquinas (the Hampden parish where he was pastor from 1992 to 2006). I’m always following him.”
In his homily to the crowd of nearly 350 in the basilica, Bishop Parker referred to the Gospel reading of Matthew 22:15-21, where Jesus tells of giving Caesar what is Caesar’s and giving to God what is God’s. Bishop Parker said Catholics should engage in the public square while recognizing that what is legal is not always morally right.
Monsignor Farmer and Molla, Bishop Parker said, “promote the culture of life”
“These are people who give to God what is God’s,” Bishop Parker said.
Email Katie V. Jones at kjones@CatholicReview.org
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