English: The only known photograph of Maria Goretti (1902).
Deutsch: Hl. Maria Goretti mit ihrer Familie, 1902.
Source: http://www.famigliacristiana.it/
Author: Unknown.
(Wikimedia Commons)
The following Text is from Wikipedia - the free encyclopædia.
Maria Teresa Goretti (16 October 1890 – 6 July 1902) is an Italian Virgin-Martyr of The Catholic Church, and one of the youngest Saints to be Canonised.[1]
She was born to a farming family. Her father died when she was nine, and her family had to share a house with another family, the Serenellis. Maria took over household duties while her mother, brothers, and sister, worked in the fields.
Festividad de Santa Maria Goretti.
Available on YouTube at
One afternoon, Alessandro, the Serenellis' twenty-year-old son, made sexual advances to her. When she refused to submit to him, he stabbed her fourteen times. She was taken to the hospital but she died forgiving him. He was arrested, convicted, and jailed.During imprisonment, he repented. After twenty-seven years, he was released from prison and visited her mother to beg forgiveness, which she granted.
He later became a Lay Brother in a Monastery, dying in 1970.
Maria Goretti was Beatified in 1947, and Canonised in 1950. She is especially Venerated in The Congregation of The Passion (Passionists).
