Maria Goretti - Hymns and Chants

Maria Goretti
For the Indian actress, see Maria Goretti (actress). For 1
the neighbourhood in Porto Alegre, Brazil, see Santa
Maria Goretti, Rio Grande do Sul.
1.1
Maria Goretti (October 16, 1890 – July 6, 1902) is
Biography
Early life
Goretti was born Maria Teresa Goretti[2] on October
16, 1890 in Corinaldo, in the Province of Ancona, then
in the Kingdom of Italy, to Luigi Goretti and Assunta
Carlini. She was the third of seven children: Antonio
(who died in infancy), Angelo, Maria, Mariano (Marino),
Alessandro (Sandrino), Ersilia and Teresa.[2][3][4][5][6]
By the time she was six, her family had become so poor
that they were forced to give up their farm, move, and
work for other farmers. So in 1896 or 1897, they moved
to Colle Gianturco, near Paliano and Frosinone, about
fifty miles outside Rome; and then in 1899 to Le Ferriere,
near modern Latina and Nettuno in Lazio, where they
lived in a building, “La Cascina Antica,” they shared with
another family which included Giovanni Serenelli and his
son, Alessandro.[3][6][7][8][9] Soon, Maria’s father Luigi
became very sick with malaria, and died when Maria
was just nine.[10] While her brothers, mother, and sister
worked in the fields, Maria would cook, sew, watch her
infant sister, and keep the house clean. It was a hard life,
but the family was very close. They shared a deep love
and faith for God.
La Cascina Antica (right), the place of Maria’s martyrdom
an Italian virgin-martyr of the Roman Catholic Church,
and she is one of the youngest canonized saints.[1] She
was born on the eastern side of Italy to a farming family,
but increased poverty forced the family to move to the
western side of the country when she was only six. Her
father died when she was nine, and the family had to share
a house with another family, the Serenellis. Maria took
over household duties from her mother, while her mother
and the rest of her family worked in the fields. One afternoon, Alessandro, the son of the Serenelli family, made
sexual advances to her, but when she refused to submit to
him because that would be a mortal sin, he stabbed her
multiple times. She was taken to hospital, but died after
forgiving him. He was promptly arrested, convicted and
jailed. After three years he repented, and when eventually released from prison, he visited her mother begging
forgiveness, which she readily granted. He later became
a lay brother in a monastery, eventually dying peacefully
in 1970. Maria was beatified in 1947, and canonized in
1950. Her mother attended both ceremonies.
1.2 Maria’s death
On July 5, 1902, eleven year-old Maria was sitting on
the outside stairs of her home, sewing one of Alessandro’s shirts and watching her infant sister Teresa, while
Alessandro was threshing beans in the barnyard.[11]
Knowing she would be alone, he returned to the house
and threatened her with death if she did not do as he said;
he was intending to rape her. She would not submit, however, protesting that what he wanted to do was a mortal
sin and warning Alessandro that he would go to hell.[12]
She desperately fought to stop Alessandro, a 19-year-old
farmhand, from raping her. She kept screaming, “No! It
is a sin! God does not want it! extquotedbl Alessandro
1
2
first choked Maria, but when she insisted she would rather
die than submit to him, he stabbed her eleven times.[13]
The injured Maria tried to reach the door, but Alessandro stopped her by stabbing her three more times before
running away.[14]
Teresa awoke with the noise and started crying, and when
Serenelli’s father and Maria’s mother came to check on
the little girl, they found the bleeding Maria and took her
to the nearest hospital in Nettuno. She underwent surgery
without anesthesia, but her injuries were beyond the doctors’ help. Halfway through the surgery, Maria woke up.
She insisted that it stay that way. The pharmacist of the
hospital in which she died said to her, “Maria, think of
me in Paradise.” She looked at the old man: “Well, who
knows, which of us is going to be there first? extquotedbl
“You, Maria,” he replied. “Then I will gladly think of
you,” said Maria. Maria also expressed concern for her
mother’s welfare.[15] The following day, 24 hours after
the attack, having expressed forgiveness for her murderer
and stating that she wanted to have him in Heaven with
her, Maria died of her injuries, while looking at a picture
of the Virgin Mary, and clutching a cross to her chest.[16]
3 BEATIFICATION AND CANONIZATION
that, while in prison, Alessandro Serenelli stated that he
did not complete the assault and Maria died a physical
virgin. Guerri identifies the weapon as an awl rather than
a dagger.[6]
2 Serenelli’s imprisonment and repentance
Alessandro Serenelli was captured shortly after the attack: the police taking him to prison overtook the ambulance carrying Maria to hospital.[17] Originally, he was
going to be sentenced to life, but since he was a minor
at that time the sentence was commuted to 30 years in
prison; judges even considered he was not as mature as
he was expected to be for a 20-year-old young man, and
that he grew up in a poor, neglectful family, with several
brothers and relatives suffering from madness and an alcoholic father.[18] It has also been suggested that it was
due to her mother’s plea for mercy that he was not sentenced to death.[19] Alessandro insisted he had attempted
to rape Maria several times and decided to kill her beWriting in 2002 based on his own interviews with
cause of her refusal and desperate crying. He remained
Alessandro Serenelli and Maria’s sister Ersilia in 1952,
unrepentant and uncommunicative from the world for
journalist Noel Crusz provided a more detailed account:
three years, until a local bishop, Monsignor Giovanni
Blandini, visited him in jail. Serenelli wrote a thank you
On July 5 in 1902, exactly a hundred years
note to the Bishop asking for his prayers and telling him
ago, at 3 p.m. whilst [Maria’s mother] Asabout a dream, “in which Maria Goretti gave him lilies,
sunta and the other children were at the threshwhich burned immediately in his hands.”[20]
ing floor, Serenelli who persistently sought sexAfter his release, Alessandro Serenelli visited Maria’s
ual favours from the 12-year-old [sic] girl apstill-living mother, Assunta, and begged her forgiveness.
proached her. She was taking care of her inShe forgave him, saying that if Maria had forgiven him
fant sister in the farm house. Allesandro [sic]
on her deathbed then she could not do less, and they atthreatened her with a 10 inch dagger, and when
tended Mass together the next day, receiving Holy ComMaria refused, as she had always done, he
munion side by side.[21] Alessandro reportedly prayed evstabbed her 14 times.
ery day to Maria Goretti and referred to her as “my little
saint.”[22] He attended her canonization in 1950.
The wounds penetrated the throat, with lesions
of the pericardium, the heart, the lungs and the
Serenelli later became a laybrother of the Order of Friars
diaphragm. Surgeons at Orsenigo were surMinor Capuchin, living in a monastery and working as its
prised that the girl was still alive. In a dying dereceptionist and gardener until dying peacefully in 1970,
position, in the presence of the Chief of Police,
aged 87.[23]
Maria told her mother of Serenelli’s sexual harassment, and two previous attempts made to
rape her. She was afraid to reveal this earlier
3 Beatification and canonization
since she was threatened with death.[6]
A third account of the assault was presented by Italian On the evening of the beatification ceremonies in Saint
historian Giordano Bruno Guerri in 1985. He asserted Peter’s Basilica, April 27, 1947, Pope Pius XII walked
3
Pope coming, I prayed, Madonna, please help me. He
put his hand on my head and said, blessed mother, happy
mother, mother of a Blessed! extquotedbl They both had
eyes wet with tears.[24]
Three years later, on June 24, 1950, Pius XII canonized Goretti as a saint, the extquotedblSaint Agnes of the
20th century.”[1] Assunta was again present at the ceremony, along with her four remaining sons and daughters.
She was the first mother ever to attend the canonization
ceremony of her child.[6] Alessandro Serenelli was also
present at the canonization.[25][26][27]
Owing to the huge crowd present, the ceremonies associated with the canonization were held outside of Saint
Peter’s Basilica, in the Piazza San Pietro. Pius XII spoke,
not as before in Latin, but in Italian. “We order and
declare, that the blessed Maria Goretti can be venerated as a Saint and We introduce her into the Canon of
Saints”. Some 500,000 people, among them a majority
of youth, had come from around the world. Pius asked
them: “Young people, pleasure of the eyes of Jesus, are
you determined to resist any attack on your chastity with
the help of grace of God? extquotedbl A resounding
“yes” was the answer.[28]
All three of her brothers would claim that she intervened
miraculously in their lives. Angelo heard her voice telling
him to emigrate to America. Alessandro was reportedly
miraculously given a sum of money to finance his own
emigration to join Angelo. Sandrino died in the United
States in 1917, and Angelo died in Italy when he returned
there in 1964. The third brother, Mariano, said he heard
her voice telling him to stay in his trench when the rest of
his unit charged the Germans in World War I. Mariano,
the only survivor of that charge, lived until 1975 and had
a large family.[5]
Her body is kept in the crypt of the Basilica of Nostra
Signora delle Grazie e Santa Maria Goretti in Nettuno,
south of Rome. It has been often reported that her body is
incorrupt but this is not the case. Her remains are kept inside a statue which is lying down beneath the altar, which
has been mistakenly believed by some to be her entire
body.[29]
A statue of St. Maria Goretti in peasant garb holding lilies and a
knife
4 Feast day
Goretti’s feast day, celebrated on July 6, was inserted in
over to Assunta. She almost fainted. “When I saw the the General Roman Calendar when it was revised in 1969.
4
8
FOOTNOTES
Maria is the patron saint of chastity, rape victims, girls, was acclaimed by critics.[32]
youth, teenage girls, poverty, purity and forgiveness.[30]
Aileen la Tourette, in her fictionalized account of Maria
Goretti (The Oldest Girl, Gariband Press, 2011), presents
a picture of her which she believes allows Maria to ex5 In art
press a more challenging and likely personality than the
one associated with the Catholic Church’s depiction of
Goretti is represented in art as a wavy-haired young girl in her. She also creates a back story for Maria’s mother as
farmer clothes or a white dress, with a bouquet of lilies in an orphan and suggests the political reasons for her canher hands, and she is sometimes counted among the ranks onization in 1950. The style of the book is reminiscent
of the Passionist order since her spiritual formation was of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, where the narrator
guided by the Passionists. Both lilies and white garments (also a dead child) looks down on events unfolding; in The
are traditional icons of virginity in Catholic iconography. Oldest Girl this occurs between chapters.
6 In media
7 See also
• St. Maria Goretti Church, Laflin, Pennsylvania
• List of Catholic saints
• Incorruptibility
8 Footnotes
[1] Hoever, Rev. Hugo, ed. “Lives of the Saints, For Every
Day of the Year”, New York: Catholic Book Publishing
Co., (1955) p. 259-60
A Catholic elementary school in Toronto, Ontario, Canada is
named in her honour. It is the largest school with over 1000
pupils.
Santa Maria Goretti is an Italian film based on the true
story of Maria Goretti.
Heaven over the Marshes (Cielo sulla palude) is another
Italian film based on her life, filmed in 1949 and directed
by Augusto Genina. Ines Orsini plays Maria and Mauro
Matteuci plays Alessandro. It was awarded a prize at the
10th International Exhibition of Cinema Art at Venice in
1949, as the film which contributed most to the spiritual
and moral betterment of mankind.[31]
Marcel Delannoy wrote a radiophonic opera, Maria
Goretti, in 1953.
In 2003, Maria Goretti, a RAI Italian TV movie directed
by Giulio Base, starring Martina Pinto as Maria Goretti,
[2] Ruef, Vinzenz. Die Wahre Geschichte von der hl. Maria
Goretti, Miriam, Jestetten, 1992, ISBN 3-87449-101-3 p.
12
[3] “Saint Maria Goretti by Her Mother”, compiled by Rev.
D. Luigi Novarese, Glasgow: John S. Burns & Sons,
(1967) p. 1.
[4] Poage, Rev. Godfrey. “In Garments All Red”, Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, (1977) pp. 48 and 59.
[5] O'Grady, Desmond. Maria Goretti: A Rush to Judgment?,
February 25, 1985 in The Age newspaper of Melbourne,
Australia. Accessed April 11, 2010.
[6] Crusz, Noel. Maria Goretti - Saint Under Siege, July 7,
2002, The Sunday Times of Sri Lanka. Accessed April
11, 2010.
[7] Ruef, 20
[8] Sister Mary Germaine. “Saint Maria Goretti: Martyr For
Purity,” St. Maria’s Messenger, 2006. Retrieved June 19,
2013.
5
[9] Città di Paliano. “Un itinerario fuori le mura” (“A route
out of the walls”). Retrieved August 2, 2013.
[10] Ruef, 21
[11] Poage, Rev. Godfrey. “In Garments All Red”, Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, (1977) pp. 87-89.
9 External links
• Friends of Maria Goretti
• Saint Maria Goretti
• at St. Maria Goretti’s canonization:
[12] Ruef, 46
[13] Poage, Rev. Godfrey. “In Garments All Red”, Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, (1977), pp. 90 and 101.
[14] Ruef, 44
[15] Ruef, 54
[16] Poage, Rev. Godfrey. “In Garments All Red”, Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, (1977), pp. 97 and 105.
[17] “Saint Maria Goretti by Her Mother”, compiled by Rev.
D. Luigi Novarese, Glasgow: John S. Burns & Sons,
(1967) p. 54.
[18] Poage, Rev. Godfrey. “In Garments All Red”, Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, (1977) pp. 36, 60 and 64.
[19] Raemers, Rev. Wm. “St. Dominic Savio and St. Maria
Goretti”, Glasgow: John S. Burns & Sons, (1954) p. 60.
[20] Ruef, 87
[21] Ruef, 88
[22] Ruef, 88-91
[23] “Alessandro Serenelli” (in Italian). Santuario di Santa
Maria Goretti in Corinaldo.
[24] Ruef, 67
[25] St Maria Goretti Biography at Mariagoretti.org
[26] St. Maria Goretti at Catholic.org
[27] St Maria Goretti at Catholicism.about.com
[28] Ruef, 71.
[29] The Incorruptibles: A Study of the Incorruption of the Bodies of Various Catholic Saints and Beati, TAN Books &
Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-89555-066-0
[30] 1962 typical edition of the Roman Missal
[31] Poage, Rev. Godfrey. “In Garments All Red”, Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, (1977) p. 118.
[32] “Maria Goretti”. IMDb. Retrieved 1 August 2014.
• (Italian) Pope Pius XII’s speech
• (Latin) Pope Pius XII’s homily
6
10
TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES
10 Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses
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