WASHINGTON — As a teenager growing up in Butler, Pa., Rick Santorum spent Sunday mornings as an altar boy, taking wheelchair-bound veterans to Roman Catholic Mass. In the ninth grade, he announced his intention to hold elective office. “I’m going to be governor of Pennsylvania,” he declared, according to his brother Dan.

Years later, as a married man and a member of Congress, Mr. Santorum wove these two strands of his life — his faith and his political aspirations — into one. Then, in 1996, when he was a freshman senator, his wife, Karen, delivered a child when she was just 20 weeks pregnant. The baby, a boy they named Gabriel, died after two hours.

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