Santorum - Personal Life

Personal Life

Santorum met his future wife, Karen Garver (born 1960), while she was a neo-natal nurse studying law at the University of Pittsburgh and he was recruiting summer interns for Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. They married in 1990 and have seven living children.

In 1996, the Santorums' son Gabriel was born prematurely after twenty weeks of pregnancy and died in the hospital two hours after birth. Karen wrote that she and Rick slept with the dead infant between them in the hospital that night, then brought his body home the following day and introduced it to their children as "your brother Gabriel". The handling of their infant son's death attracted scrutiny in January 2012 following Santorum's success in the Iowa caucuses. However, mental health experts interviewed by ABC News said what the Santorums did was encouraged at the time, although no longer recommended. Writers who had experienced a stillbirth defended the Santorums' actions, with columnist Charles Lane writing that he personally regretted not showing the body of his stillborn baby to his then-six-year old son, and Jessica Heslam, writing that holding her own stillborn baby brought her "much peace".

The four eldest children appeared with their parents on Piers Morgan Tonight in January 2012. Elizabeth, who was five, at the time of Gabriel's death, said she was glad to have seen him, and that he holds a place in her heart. In 2008 at the age of 48, Karen Garver Santorum gave birth to her eighth child, Isabella, who was diagnosed with Edwards syndrome (Trisomy 18), a serious genetic disorder, with only a 10% chance of survival past one year old. Following the second hospitalization of Isabella in a few months, Santorum officially suspended his campaign for the United States presidential election, 2012.

Rick Santorum traveled in 2002 to Rome to speak at a centenary celebration of the birth of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei. He and his wife were invested as Knight and Dame of Magistral Grace of the Knights of Malta in a ceremony at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on November 12, 2004.

Santorum's net worth has been estimated between $880,000 and $3 million, which mainly comes from five rental properties around Penn State University, two personal homes in Great Falls and Penn Hills, and some IRA accounts. In 1997, Santorum purchased a three-bedroom house in the Pittsburgh suburb of Penn Hills. In 2001, he bought a $640,000 house in Leesburg, Virginia, but sold it in 2007 for $850,000, and purchased a $2 million home in Great Falls, Virginia.