Saint of the Day

01 · Read · A life to discover

St. Maria Goretti

Maria Goretti grew up in a poor Italian farming family and helped care for her younger siblings. In July 1902, when she was eleven, Alessandro Serenelli attacked her during an attempted sexual assault. She died from her injuries in a hospital at Nettuno the following day.

The family's poverty required repeated moves and shared accommodation. After her father's death, Maria helped with cooking and childcare while other family members worked. Those responsibilities and her limited access to schooling describe the actual circumstances of a child whose life is sometimes reduced entirely to the final attack.

Accounts of her final hours emphasize her forgiveness of her attacker. The Church canonized her in 1950 and remembers her as a young martyr. Her story concerns a child's faith and the violence inflicted upon her; responsibility for the assault belongs entirely to the attacker. Her remains are venerated at Nettuno, and her feast is July 6.

Her forgiveness has become central to devotional remembrance, but it does not minimize the crime or transfer responsibility to its victim. Nor does her canonization imply that someone who survives sexual violence has lost dignity. The account should preserve Maria's personhood, family life, and faith without making an assault into a standard by which other victims are judged.

This saint is included on this recurring date in the U.S. Roman Rite calendar published by the USCCB. This reading guide gives U.S. calendar saints priority; the Mass celebrated on a particular year’s date can differ because of Sundays, seasons or higher-ranking celebrations.