It is the symbol of defense purity at the cost of living after an attempt to rape. He died at 12, was beatified in 1947 and proclaimed Holy in 1950 by Pope Pius XII
During that Holy year. His killer,
Alessandro Serenellihe was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He repented and converted only after dreaming of Mary who said to him would reach Heaven. When he was released after 27 years he asked for forgiveness to the girl’s mother.
The display case with the mortal remains of the Saint
The poor family in the swamps of the farm Pontine
Maria Goretti, born in Corinaldo (Ancona) on October 16, 1890 and baptized on the same day, was then created, according to the use of times in a small age, on October 4, 1896 when the bishop Giulio Boschi came to a pastoral visit to the village.
In 1897, the parents Luigi Goretti and Assunta Carlini who had beyond the firstborn Maria, four other children, being an agricultural laborers and struggling in daily living with the large family, decided to find work elsewhere; While many fellow villagers attempted the adventure of emigration to the Americas, they chose to move to the Pontine countryside in Lazio, which being infested with malaria, very few chose to move there.
They came first In the senator’s estate I chose in Paliano, as a sharecropper together with another family already residing the Serenelli, also of Marche origin, made up only of father and son, being the mother who has long been dead. Then the relationships with the owner spoiled themselves, and the Serenelli and the Goretti had to leave Paliano and fortunately found, always as a sharecropper, another accommodation in the hold of Count Lorenzo Mazzoleni in Ferriere di Conca, in the Pontine marshes; area that before the reclamation, which began in 1925 and completed only in 1939, served as a natural dam between the northern part and the immense marsh to the south; It was certainly not a healthy place, because in summer it was invaded by mosquitoes and malaria; The single -effective drug chinino was mainly used for therapeutic purposes, but it was not needed for the preventive purpose.
The agreement with the Serenelli family
While the parents worked in the massacring work of the fields, Mary took care of the household chores, keeping the farmhouse in order and taking care of the smaller brothers. After a few years, on May 6, 1900, the father did not return home, struck down by malaria on the margins of the swamp, Maria was then 10 years old; He began to comfort his mother left alone with the family and with a job to be done higher than his strength; Although the harvest was good that year, the family remained in debt with the Count Mazzoleni of the sharecropping rights, of 15 lire of the time.
The owner after inviting his mother to leave that work and the house, because it was impossible to maintain the working relationship linked to a demanding market and a abundant and safe harvest; But behind the desperate request of a mother taken to stay, because with five children he had not to go, the Count agreed as long as he was associated with the Serenelli, who lived in the same farmhouse and cultivated other land.
The solution seemed ideal, the Serenelli father and son cultivated the fields and assumed the children and the two houses cared, in addition to the work on the Aia; While Mary dedicated herself to the sale of eggs and doves in the distant Neptune, to the transport of water that was not at home as today, to the preparation of the breakfasts for the workers in the fields, to the mende of the clothing. He had no longer been able to go to school, which he already frequented occasionally; it was defined by the people of the surroundings “An angel of daughter”; The Rosary recited, he was very religious as the whole family. He had insisted on First Communion less than eleven years, instead of the twelve as it was used then; With great sacrifices he managed to attend catechism, and so in May 1902 he was able to receive the Eucharist.
Relationships are encouraged
Until then his was a life of hardships, hard work, sacrifices, few masses to which he attended the church of nearby Conca, today Borgo Montello, but who closed from June to September, when the Mazzoleni counts left to escape malaria and mosquitoes that proliferated in the heat. Then sacrificing hours to sleep, he went to Mass in Campomorto distant distant from several km. Meanwhile, the relationships between the Serenelli father and Assunta Goretti encouraged themselves, as he was a widower he soon understood that if he wanted to eat her and his family, he had to submit to his requests not exactly honest. Since he was not willing to yield, Serenelli began to control everything, even the eggs in the chicken coop and pass the foods with the dropper.
Meanwhile, Mary came to the twelve years of age, she began to develop in the body, becoming beautiful aspect, but her soul was simple and pure and had not had time to dream for her future, all taken to help in work, support and encourage her mother, look after the small brothers. The son of Serenelli, AlexanderMeanwhile, he had reached the age of 18, of a robust physicist was the pride of his father, not only because he knew how to work hard in the fields, but rarely in those times among the peasants, he knew how to read and write; When he went to the village, he always returned with some not recommendable magazines, which brought to the house, aroused the protests of Assunta, but the father justified him saying that he had to practice reading. Alessandro now looked at Mary with eyes different for a few years earlier and began to try to have special approaches, undermining her several times, always rejected by the girl; One day he openly did some sinful proposals and the refusal of Mary, fearing that he spoke of it in the family, threatened her about death if he did it. In order not to aggravate the already thesis relationships between the two families, Mary stood silent, remaining amazed by the situation he did not understand, because he had always considered Alexander as a brother.
The house of the martyrdom of Santa Maria Goretti
July 5, 1902: the rape attempt and forgiveness
The July 5, 1902 The Serenelli and the Goretti were intent on the outline of the dry beans and Maria sitting on the landing that looked at the Hague, recalled a shirt of the young Alexander.
At a certain point he left the work and with a pretext he started to the house; Arriving on the landing, he invited Maria to enter inside, but she did not move, then he took her by the arm and with a certain strength he dragged her inside the kitchen that was the first room where he entered. The story is by Alessandro Serenelli himself, made to the ecclesiastical court; Maria Goretti understood his intentions and began to tell him: “No, no, God doesn’t want to, if you do this go to hell“ “What do Alexander do? You go to hell so …”, When he saw the patches of blood on his clothes, he left her, but he understood that he had wounded her mortally. The shouts of the girl barely felt by the others, made her mother tired, who found her in a pool of blood, was transported to the hospital of Orsenico di Nettuno, where following the copious loss of blood and the surviving peritonitis caused by the 14 wounds of the awl, the doctors were unable to save her.
Still alive and conscious, he forgiven his murderer, saying the mother who witnessed her: “For the love of Jesus, forgive him; I want me to come with me to heaven“; It was registered on the death bed between the daughters of Mary, received the last sacraments and pushed the next day, on 6 July 1902.
The repentance of Alessandro and the request for forgiveness
Alessandro arrested and sentenced to prison, Already in 1910 he had repented and dreamed of “Marietta”, as he was called, in heaven that collected flowers and gave them to him with his unmistakable smile. When he left prison in 1928, he went to a mother taken to ask her for forgiveness and as a sign of reconciliation both approached the communion, on the Christmas night of that year.
On May 31, 1935 in the diocese of Albano the first trial for its beatification opened, which took place April 27, 1947 with Pius XII, Pope himself cannon it on June 24, 1950in front of an immense crowd, after congratulating his mother, who sick and sitting in a wheelchair, witnessed the ritual from a Vatican window.
Her body rests in the chapel dedicated to her, in the sanctuary of the Madonna delle Grazie in Neptune, kept by the Passionist father and the destination of countless pilgrimages from all over the Catholic world.
