Maria Goretti

Saint Maria Goretti

Memorial
6 July

Profile

Our Saint today is a special patron of the Whip. As with St. Agnes, St. Lucy, St. Agatha and all the rest, our saint today was a beautiful, yet pious farm girl, in 1896 Maria’s father died of malaria, and the family was forced to move onto the Serenelli farm to survive.

In 1902 at age twelve, Maria was attacked by 19-year-old farm hand Alessandro Serenelli. Alessandro was addicted to pornography. He tried to rape the girl who fought, yelled that it was a sin, and that he would go to hell. He tried to choke her into submission, and then stabbed her fourteen times. Eleven times at first. When she tried to reach the door, Allesandro came back and stabbed her three more times.

She survived in hospital for two days; she was concerned about her mother and how she would go ahead without her help. Maria promised to remember the pharmacist in the hospital when she entered paradise. Maria also forgave her attacker, and asked God’s forgiveness of him. She died holding a crucifix and medal of Our Lady. She is counted as a martyr for purity.

Allessandro remained unrepentant, even arrogant over his crime. He was imprisoned and was a lot of trouble for officials and the guards; it seems he was a low life creep all around. While in prison for his crime, he had a vision of Maria. He saw a garden where a young girl, dressed in white, gathered lilies. She smiled, came near him, and encouraged him to accept an armful of the lilies, as he took them, each lily transformed into a still white flame. Maria then disappeared. The Holy Spirit touched Aleesandro; this vision of Maria led to Alessandro’s conversion, he later testified at her cause for beatification. Serenelli’s sentence was commuted to 30 years and on his release he later became a laybrother of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, living in a monastery and working as its receptionist and gardener until dying peacefully in 1970.

Allesandro was present at Maria’s Cannonization. The ceremony was attended by 250,000 including her mother, the only time a parent has witnessed her child’s canonization. As the Pope approached the humble old woman she was dumbfounded that His Holiness Pius XII was going to speak to her.

Maria is the patron saint of our youth: in the Lower Church of Saint Clare’s in the Bronx, where the Scouts and the old “youth group” used to meet, on the arch above the sanctuary “Saint Maria Gorretti pray for our youth,” was inscribed. It seemed a little wordy to me at the time.

The feminist movement does not like Maria Gorretti. There have been published anti Maria Gorretti books. It is a shame the anger some folk have…..and can not see in themselves. The real miracle was not that Maria was a victim of a violent crime; the miracle was her forgiveness and healing of the deeply troubled Allesandro. He has no real power except to incite stuff like this; He is always at work, pray to Michael for them……

Born
16 October 1890 at Corinaldo, Ancona, Italy

Died
6 July 1902 at the age of 12

Patronage

against poverty
against the death of parents
children
Children of Mary
girls
martyrs
poor people
rape victims
young people in general