Saint Maria Goretti

Virgin and Martyr
(1890–1902)

Saint Maria Goretti was born on October 16, 1890, at Corinaldo near Ancona in central Italy, the third of seven children of Luigi Goretti and Assunta Carlini. The family was extremely poor, and when Maria was still young they migrated southward in search of work, settling eventually at Ferriere di Conca in the Pontine Marshes south of Rome, where Luigi worked as a farm labourer in partnership with another family named Serenelli. Luigi died of malaria in 1900, and thereafter the Goretti family was dependent on continuing the partnership with the Serenellis.

Maria, at the age of nine, took over the management of the household, cooking, cleaning, and caring for the younger children while her mother and the older children worked in the fields. Contemporary accounts describe her as a cheerful, responsible, deeply religious child who prayed with great fervour, loved the Blessed Virgin Mary with special devotion, and showed in her daily life a goodness and purity that was the admiration of all who knew her. She had not yet received her First Holy Communion and was preparing for this with great eagerness.

Alessandro Serenelli, the twenty-year-old son of the other family, had conceived a violent passion for Maria and had on several occasions made advances which she firmly rejected. On July 5, 1902, while the other members of both families were working in the fields, Alessandro came to the cottage where Maria was sewing alone and threatened her with a knife unless she submitted to him. She refused absolutely, saying she would rather die than commit such a sin. Alessandro stabbed her fourteen times.

She was taken to the hospital at Nettuno, where she died after about twenty hours of suffering, which she bore with extraordinary patience and peace. Before she died she forgave her attacker explicitly, saying she hoped to meet him in heaven. Alessandro was convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison. In prison he experienced a conversion, attributing it to a vision of Maria. After his release he lived as a lay brother at a Capuchin monastery and was present at her canonisation.

Maria Goretti was beatified in 1947 and canonised on June 24, 1950, by Pope Pius XII, in the largest canonisation ceremony ever held, before a crowd estimated at more than half a million people. Her mother, then eighty-two years old, was present. She is the patron of rape victims, youth, and girls, and her feast is celebrated on July 6th.