Saint Maria Goretti, a Saint For Poor, Young Girls.

July 6 marks the Feast of Maria Goretti, patron saint of chastity, rape victims, girls, youth, teenage girls, poverty, purity, and forgiveness.

"Not only is he a martyr one who refuses to deny a truth of the faith, but he who dies for the sake of some virtue, or to avoid sin against any commandment." - Saint Thomas Aquinas 

Maria was the daughter of a poor Italian tenant farmer, who had no chance to go to school and never learned to read or write. Her threshold of faith was tested at the tender age of eleven years when she was willing to undergo death rather than participate in a sin against God. Her attacker was a neighbor and would-be-rapist, 18-year-old Alessandro, who stabbed her 14 times. Maria was taken to a hospital and during this time, she was most concerned with the welfare of her mother, forgiveness of her murderer and her welcoming of Viaticum, her last Holy Communion. She died about 24 hours after the attack.


St. Maria Goretti was canonized by Pope Pius XII before the largest throng of people- over 200,000- ever to attend a canonization ceremony. It was also the first time in history that a mother, Assunta Goretti, was present for the canonization of her own daughter! 

Pope John Paul II in a Homily commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the virgin-martyr's birth, he emphasized her importance for our own troubled times: "She did not flee from the voice of the Holy Spirit, from the voice of her conscience. She rather chose death. Through the gift of fortitude the Holy Spirit helped her to 'judge"- and to choose with her young spirit. She chose death when there was no other way to defend her virginal purity. Maria Goretti's blood, shed in a sacrifice of total fidelity to God, reminds us that we are also called to offer ourselves to the Father. We are called to fulfill the divine will in order to be found holy and pleasing in His sight. Our call to holiness, which is the vocation of every baptized person, is encouraged by the example of this young martyr.

"Today, we thank the Blessed Trinity for this young life, and for the martyrdom which crowned it. Through her life and heroic death, the Son of man was glorified at the beginning of our century. 'Blessed be God in His Saints'." (L'Osservatore Romano- English ed., 10/7/91)