SAINT MARIA GORETTI

Feast Day - July 6

Lived (October 16, 1890 – July 6, 1902)

Patron Saint of Girls, Teenagers and Catholic Youths

The simple story of Saint Maria Goretti attracted one of the largest crowd ever assembled for a canonization—250,000.

Maria was the daughter of a poor Italian tenant farmer, she never learned to read or write, as she had no chance to go to School. When Maria made her First Communion not long before her death at age 12, she was one of the larger and somewhat backward members of the class.

On a hot afternoon in July, Maria was sitting at the top of the stairs of her house, mending a shirt. She was not quite 12 years old, but physically mature. A cart stopped outside, and a neighbour, 18-year-old Alessandro, ran up the stairs. He called Maria but she wouldn't answer. This annoyed him, so he seized her and pulled her into a bedroom, since he had been making sexual advances to maria. She struggled and tried to call for help. “No, God does not wish it,” she cried out. “It is a sin. You will go to hell for it.” Then, Alessandro began to strike her blindly with a knife.

Maria was taken to a hospital. Her last hours were marked by the usual simple compassion of the good—concern about where her mother would sleep, forgiveness of her murderer (she had been in fear of him, but did not say anything lest she cause trouble to his family), and her devout welcoming of Viaticum, her last Holy Communion. She died about 24 hours after the attack.

Alessandro was sentenced to 30 years in prison. For a long time he was unrepentant and surly. One night he had a dream or vision of Maria gathering flowers and offering them to him. This changed his life. When he was released after 27 years, his first act was to go to beg the forgiveness of Maria’s mother.

Devotion to the young martyr grew, miracles were worked, and in less than half a century she was canonized. At her beatification in 1947, her 82-year-old mother, two sisters and a brother, appeared with Pope Pius XII on the balcony of St. Peter’s. Three years later at Maria’s canonization, a 66-year-old Alessandro Serenelli knelt among the quarter-million people, shedding tears of joy.