Saint of the week: Maria Goretti

Aimee Boudreaux MacIver
Jul 1
3 min read

*The only known photograph of Maria, circa 1902*

I realized after I wrote this that it was mostly about Maria Goretti's mother, Assunta, and Maria's killer, Alessandro Serenelli. Maybe it's because the facts of Maria's life are few and brief. But maybe it's also because the fruit of her heroic virtue ripened most miraculously in others.

July 5, 1902, Nettuno, Italy: It was a typical work day when Assunta Goretti received the news that her daughter Maria had been butchered by a neighbor’s son because she had refused to perform sexual favors for him. Who could have foreseen such an event that morning? Was it Assunta’s worst nightmare?

I doubt it. Living in poverty, she probably feared not being able to feed her children, or buy them medicine if they should become sick. I doubt that on any given day she feared her daughter would be stabbed 14 times in the throat, heart and lungs with a jagged awl.

In a moment, Assunta was submerged in the blinding-hot shock of a previously inconceivable horror. She saw only blankness where once she had seen her daughter’s future. Anyone would give her credit for simply pressing on to raise her other children.

No one expected Maria to live for longer than a day, but she did. No one expected Maria to forgive her killer from her deathbed, but she did—readily. No one expected Assunta’s reaction to Maria’s murder to be so free of bitterness: “I was not worthy of such an angel!” She praised God for her daughter heroic virtue, even if it had cost her life.

And no one expected how the story would end.

After several years in prison, Maria’s killer, Alessandro Serenelli, had a vision of Maria in which she told him that he could be forgiven and his soul could still attain Heaven. In the vision she handed him 14 lilies corresponding to the 14 stabs wounds he had inflicted upon her. When he accepted the lilies, they transformed into 14 burning flames in his hands.

Alessandro experienced profound conversion. He repented. He served 27 years in prison and was recognized as a model prisoner. The man consumed with lust and violence had again done something everyone thought inconceivable—change.

A few years after Alessandro was released from prison, he went to the home of Assunta Goretti to ask forgiveness. Every time I reflect on this, I am stunned by his audacity. What did he expect when the now-elderly woman opened the door, not suspecting that she would be suddenly face to face with her daughter’s killer?

I try to imagine Assunta’s position: hearing the knock, slowly getting up to answer the door, unhooking the chain, turning the knob… and seeing him. Thirty-one years after last seeing him at his trial. Not one of those 11,333 days had passed without the scar of loss throbbing in her heart.

She saw him there. He begged forgiveness. She cried, “Marietta forgave you, Christ has forgiven you, and why should I not also forgive you? I forgive you, my son. Your evil days are past and to me, you are a long-suffering son.”

She escorted him to Mass the next day, and they knelt side by side at the rail to receive the Eucharist together. The Goretti family eventually referred to him as “Uncle Alessandro.” He spent the rest of his life in a Capuchin monastery as receptionist and gardener. On June 24, 1950, the family invited Alessandro attended Maria’s Mass of canonization. He declined in order not to cause distraction from the event.

Inconceivable. Beyond all reasonable expectation. But true.

Maria Goretti is a celebration of how bold, courageous, self-possessed, generous, convicted, merciful, and heroic teen girls can be in the face of darkness and injustice, despite the thousand ways culture tries to thwart their beauty and strength. In her tenacity and light, Maria Goretti teaches us that in drudgery, in difficulty, and even in horror and grief, we have so much more than expectation.

We have hope.

St Maria Goretti's feast is July 6.