Maria Goretti
An Italian virgin-martyr of the Catholic Church, and one of the youngest canonized saints. She was stabbed to death for resisting a sexual assault.
- Contemporary era
- Italy
- Feast day July 6
- 1890 – 1902
- Martyr
- Virgin
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Maria Goretti (1890-1902) was a young Italian peasant girl, born in Corinaldo. At the age of eleven, she was fatally stabbed on July 6, 1902, while resisting sexual advances from her neighbor, Alessandro Serenelli. Before dying, she explicitly forgave her assailant. Her act of purity and her forgiveness became an inspiring example for the Catholic Church. She was beatified in 1947 and canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1950, in the presence of her mother Assunta, the first mother to attend the canonization of her own daughter; Alessandro Serenelli, who had repented and become a Franciscan Tertiary, did not attend according to his biographers, contrary to what the press reported at the time. She is venerated as a martyr of purity.
