Who was St. Maria Goretti?
Maria Goretti was born on October 16, 1890, in Corinaldo, in eastern Italy, into a family of poor farmers. Vatican News says she was the third of seven children; Franciscan Media's longer account says the second of five. The family lost its farm and ended up as tenant farmers near Nettuno, south of Rome. Her father died of malaria in 1900, when Maria was nine. Her mother, Assunta, went out to work the fields, and Maria, who never learned to read or write, kept the house, cooked and looked after the younger children. A kind woman taught her the catechism by word of mouth, and she made her First Communion that way.
To make ends meet, the Gorettis shared their living quarters with another family, the Serenellis: a father who drank and a son, Alessandro, who had recently come back from time at sea. The sources give his age as eighteen or twenty. Maria was afraid of him. Franciscan Media says she told no one, "lest she cause trouble to his family."
On July 5, 1902, while she was alone, mending one of his shirts, Alessandro tried to rape her. She refused and told him it was a sin, and that he would go to hell for it. He stabbed her and fled. She was taken to the hospital and lived about twenty-four hours. She received her last Communion there. She told the police who had attacked her, and then she said the words the Church remembers her for. Vatican News gives them as "I forgive him, and I want him with me in heaven." A homily preached at her shrine in Nettuno in 2003, published by the Holy See, gives them as "Through love of Jesus, I forgive him with all my heart." She died on July 6, 1902. She was not yet twelve.
That is the whole of her life. The Church canonized a child who kept the faith she had been taught, who said no, and who forgave.
Alessandro Serenelli and the long road back
Alessandro was under twenty-one, so he was given thirty years in prison instead of life. For years he showed no remorse. Then, the sources agree, he dreamed of Maria. She offered him flowers, lilies in most accounts. Franciscan Media says simply, "His life changed." The change was not instant; its longer account says it took about eight years before he fully opened himself to God.
He was released after twenty-seven years. The first thing he did was go to Assunta Goretti and beg her forgiveness. She told him she had to forgive him, because Maria had. Then the two of them went to Mass together. Vatican News says Alessandro became a Franciscan lay brother and worked in a monastery garden until his death; Franciscan Media says he was gardener and porter at a Capuchin monastery. He died in 1969. In his will he called Maria his light and his protectress.
Maria was beatified in 1947 and canonized by Pope Pius XII on June 24, 1950, in front of St. Peter's Basilica. Her mother and her four surviving brothers and sisters were there. Vatican News says Alessandro was present too; Franciscan Media says he was sixty-six, knelt in the crowd and wept.
Why Catholics pray to St. Maria Goretti for forgiveness
Her patronage of young people is not a papal decree, but it goes back to the pope who canonized her. In his prayer that day Pius XII said that "fathers and mothers turn" to her, and that in her "all children and young people find shelter." Franciscan Media lists her as patron of Catholic youth and teenagers. The Church presents her to the young as a model of chastity. But what people most often bring to her is not purity. It is the wound someone else made, and the question of what to do with it.
Maria did not forgive from a safe distance. She forgave the man who killed her while she was dying of what he had done, and she wished him heaven. Cardinal Sodano, preaching at Nettuno on April 25, 2003, to close the celebrations for the centenary of her martyrdom, called that forgiveness "a masterpiece of Christian tenderness." It opened a door that he eventually walked through, and the story of her forgiveness is also the story of his conversion. The two cannot be separated.
So Catholics ask her to pray for them when they have been hurt by someone they trusted, or by someone who lived under the same roof; when they cannot imagine forgiving; when they can forgive in words but not yet in the body, which still flinches; and when they are the one who did the harm and cannot believe there is a way back. Her story says there is. It took Alessandro eight years, and then the rest of his life.
How to pray to St. Maria Goretti
Her memorial is July 6. It is optional on the General Roman Calendar, so some parishes will mark it and some will not. The nine days before it, June 27 to July 5, are the natural time for a novena. Her shrine is at Nettuno, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Grace and St. Maria Goretti. Any day is a good day.
Say the prayer below once. Then say what you actually feel, including the parts that are not forgiving at all. Forgiveness in the Church is a gift asked for, not a feeling produced, and it is fine to ask for it long before you have it. Pair the prayer with Confession if you carry guilt of your own, and with Mass, where Maria received her last Communion.
One thing must be said plainly. If you were assaulted or abused, or you are in danger now, prayer walks beside the police, a doctor and a counselor; it does not replace them. Maria's silence about her fear is part of her story, not a model to copy. Telling someone is not a failure of faith. If the person who hurt you is still near you, get safe first. Then pray.