Religion: Little Martyr

In Rome last week, for the first time in history, a mother heard her daughter canonized a saint. In a place of special honor near the papal throne, 86-year-old Assunta Goretti sat with her two sons and two daughters and wept. “My daughter, my daughter,” she cried. “My little Marietta!”

In 1902, Maria Goretti, daughter of poor sharecroppers on the Pontine marshes south of Rome, was eleven years old. When 19-year-old Alessandro Serenelli tried to rape her, she resisted him, even though he stabbed her to death. As she lay dying, Maria forgave Serenelli and promised to pray for him in heaven. Serenelli served 27 penitent years in prison for his crime and is now a handyman and pig-tender at a Capuchin monastery. There last week he spent the day of Maria’s canonization “in prayer more intense than ever.”

Fitted with a mask of wax, Saint Maria’s skeleton had been brought to Rome for public veneration from her home town of Nettuno, near the Anzio beachhead of World War II. The ceremony had to be moved out of the basilica into St. Peter’s Square because of the great crowds—estimated by the Vatican radio at 500,000. Pope Pius XII, robed in scarlet in honor of Maria’s martyrdom and wearing the triregnum, his three-tiered crown, spoke from a portable throne to a throng that stretched before him for a quarter of a mile. Calling upon the world to follow the example of “the little sweet Martyr of Purity,” he asked the young people in the crowd whether they would resist any attempt against their virtue. “Si!” they shouted in chorus.

July 6, anniversary of Maria’s death, was set as a feast day for Roman Catholics to commemorate each year.