St. Maria Goretti: A Saint in Need of Revisiting

Nearly everyone has experienced the principle behind the game of “telephone”: i.e. frequent repetition from one person to another lends itself to distortions. On a larger scale, this means that the most popular people, stories, etc. are often the most misunderstood. This principle applies all the more in the internet age, with its dramatically amplified ease of sharing information.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the most popular saints are often the most surrounded by misunderstanding. After hearing many accounts of the life of one especially beloved saint, Maria Goretti (1890–1902), I have had to conclude that her life is in want of revisiting in our time.

This little Italian farm girl, who lived a simple, difficult, pious life until her murder at the hands of a would-be rapist, is now widely venerated as a patroness of purity. However, from what I have seen thus far, the many brief narratives of her life (not many longer biographies exist, understandably, given that she lived less than twelve years) tend to overlook two points. First, generally very little is said about Maria’s life before the day she was killed. Second, she was heroic in death, but the bases of this heroism are often missed.

The Life of Maria Goretti

Who was Maria Goretti? All too often, her “saint of the day” entry will skip straight to describing her death. Perhaps biographers have difficulty writing about her life because, by contrast, it seems so unspectacular. Yet it’s precisely in that ordinary life that Maria became a saint and a model for us.

Growing up in an impoverished, struggling family in rural Italy, she worked with them on their farm. After her father died, she took her mother’s place in the house, cooking, cleaning, mending, and taking care of the little ones. She prayed with remarkably mature piety for her age, reciting the Rosary daily for her father’s soul and making the extra effort to attend and complete such First Communion classes as were available to her — no small feat for a farm child who could not read and had little time to spare from chores.¹

Maria never worked miracles, saw visions, or preached in the streets, but what God gave her to do, she did with a generous heart. She was a devoted daughter and sister, a wholehearted lover of God, and a radiant example of the humble, childlike innocence Our Lord praises so highly (Mt 11:25, 18:1–4, 19:13–15). Cheerful and uncomplaining amid her poverty and disproportionate responsibilities, thinking first of Jesus and Mary and of those who needed her even when she had so much to do, she offers a simple model of heroic virtue to children and adults alike.

Maria’s Death: What Makes a Martyr?

What about the end of Maria’s life? This part has been documented in far more detail. Her attacker, twenty-year-old Alessandro Serenelli, whose father shared the farm with the Gorettis, had already made advances on Maria several times; tragically, she said nothing to anyone, as he had threatened to kill her if she spoke. Alessandro finally cornered her alone; a struggle ensued in which she cried out; he eventually stabbed her and ran away. She was taken to the nearest hospital, where she died the next day.

If you ask Catholics who know Maria’s story what virtue was most evident in the way she died, you will most likely hear “purity” or perhaps “chastity.” My own answer is “charity.” I will return to this point, but first consider the idea of purity and why I did not choose that answer.

In devotional literature Maria is commonly described as a virgin martyr, a martyr for purity; one often hears that she “died rather than submit” or that she “courageously gave her life to defend her purity,” etc. Even the canonization homily of Pope Pius XII framed Maria’s life in these terms: “Without warning a vicious stranger burst upon her, bent on raping her and destroying her childlike purity . . . With splendid courage she surrendered herself to God and his grace and so gave her life to protect her virginity. She preferred to die rather than to lose her virginity.”²

I grew up hearing Maria spoken of this way, and for a long time it simply sounded normal to me. In early adulthood, though, after coming to know people who had suffered sexual violence, and gaining a more mature understanding of what happens in these crimes, I found my perspective changing.

What does it mean to be a martyr? The Church provides a definition in the Catechism: “Martyrdom is the supreme witness given to the truth of the faith: it means bearing witness even unto death. The martyr bears witness to Christ who died and rose, to whom he is united by charity” (CCC §2473, emphasis in original). The most common examples are the countless saints killed by oppressors trying to stamp out their faith, who could have lived if they had renounced that faith, but chose to cling to it even at the cost of their lives. Others include those in some role of Christian service, refusing to leave those who needed them even in the knowledge that they would be killed, like the seven French Trappist monks who remained in Algeria in the face of the growing terrorist threat.³ Or again, there are those like St. Maximilian Kolbe, who knowingly made himself a target for the Nazis with his missionary labors, and later, in Auschwitz, volunteered to die in the place of another man.

In a sense, every saint is a martyr because every holy life bears witness to Christ. In strict, technical usage, however, we do not call a saint a martyr if he or she was not killed for Christ. Every saint who died a martyr could have taken an easier way out. Those who died in ancient Rome could have sacrificed to the idols; St. Maximilian Kolbe could have kept a low profile; the Trappists in Algeria could have fled back to France.

In light of this context, then, calling Maria Goretti a martyr for purity clearly implies, first, that she had a choice regarding what happened to her, and second, that her other option would have involved some sin. But what choice did she have, and what sin was she tempted to commit? A rapist is not offering his victim a choice; he is forcing himself on her. How differently might things have gone for Maria if Alessandro had continued to pit his superior physical strength against hers, instead of flying into a mindless rage and stabbing her?

The importance of this distinction is crucial, especially in any kind of pastoral outreach to those who have suffered sexual violence. The repeated descriptions of Maria’s death as “martyrdom for purity/virginity” help explain the impression — easy to find in Catholic and right-leaning Protestant circles — that a woman who is raped loses her virginity and even her purity. The result, all too often, is alienation not only from a saint but even, to varying degrees, from the Church or Catholic culture. Rebecca Hamilton reports her own experience from extensive work with survivors of rape:

St. Maria Goretti disturbed rather than comforted every rape victim I have dealt with who knew about her. The reason lies in the dual impressions taken from her story that (1) The Church is teaching that is better to die than suffer rape and live, and, (2) The Church is teaching that if a woman really wants to, she can avoid being raped.⁴

Unsurprisingly, as Hamilton explains, the view of the Church that these impressions create is one of “utter blindness to the reality of rape and what it means to women.” And no one suffering deep wounds can listen for long to someone who is blind to their pain.

Clearly, then, it won’t do to ignore these issues. After all, we venerate the saints and spread their stories in order to lead people closer to Christ. If the way we talk about a particular saint is moving a significant number of hearts in the other direction, something has to change.

My goal here is to work toward creating a bridge: to help those who have suffered from the distortions just described to find in Maria an understanding friend and patron, and to demonstrate to those accustomed to the “virgin martyr for purity” language that one can speak differently about Maria without revering her any less.

Purity: A Treasure No Thief Can Steal

It may be necessary, first, to establish clearly what the Church does have to say about purity, virginity, and sexual violence.

“Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Mt 6:20). Throughout Christian tradition, these words of Our Lord have been understood to refer to the treasures of grace and virtue, to everything that makes the soul alive and beautiful. If purity is a virtue, it must be counted as this kind of treasure, the kind that cannot be stolen because it belongs to the soul. The Index of the Catechism has an entry, not for “Purity” by itself but for “Purity of heart,” which is defined at §2518 as follows: “‘Pure in heart’ refers to those who have attuned their intellects and wills to the demands of God’s holiness, chiefly in three areas: charity; chastity or sexual rectitude; love of truth and orthodoxy of faith.” The virtue resides in the intellect and will, with charity listed as its foremost component.

The ancient Christian tradition of honoring virginity suggests that this, too, is a spiritual treasure, and not something inherently bound up with bodily organs. The saints honored as virgins are those who answered a call to dedicate themselves wholly and exclusively to Christ, not merely individuals whose lives were without any sexual encounter. The gift and grace of such a choice are not undone by someone else’s sin. One can see the same principle at work in “saving oneself for marriage”; this “saving” is about presenting one’s beloved with an undivided heart and soul. Certainly, this gift is expressed bodily, but it is a bodily expression of a spiritual reality.

As Rebecca Hamilton says in the above-quoted article, “Virginity is not a physical thing. It’s a matter of spiritual purity, and the rapist . . . cannot touch that.”⁵ On this point Hamilton is in agreement with the Catholic Encyclopedia, whose entry on virginity opens, “Morally, virginity signifies the reverence for bodily integrity which is suggested by a virtuous motive. Thus understood, it is common to both sexes, and may exist in a woman even after bodily violation committed upon her against her will.”⁶

In addition, voices from among the Church’s oldest and most venerated have spoken strongly on the subject. St. Augustine, in The City of God, mounts a forceful argument that a person cannot be made less pure by being the victim of another’s sin:

Is there a fear that even another’s lust may pollute the violated? It will not pollute, if it be another’s . . . Since no one, however magnanimous and pure, has always the disposal of his own body, but can control only the consent and refusal of his will, what sane man can suppose that, if his body be seized and forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of another, he thereby loses his purity?⁷

Augustine adds that “the virtue of holy continence, when it resists the uncleanness of carnal lust, sanctifies even the body, and therefore when this continence remains unsubdued, even the sanctity of the body is preserved.” Thus, neither virginity nor purity is lost through rape.

St. Thomas Aquinas, too, maintains in the Summa Theologiae that not only does a woman who is raped not lose her virginity, but if this outrage is inflicted on her out of hatred for her faith, it counts toward the merit of her martyrdom:

If a virgin is violated, she does not forfeit the aureole [i.e. the holiness of her virginal chastity] provided she retain unfailingly the purpose of observing perpetual virginity, and nowise consent to the act. Nor does she forfeit virginity thereby; and be this said, whether she be violated for the faith, or for any other cause whatever. But if she suffer this for the faith, this will count to her for merit, and will be a kind of martyrdom: wherefore Lucy said: “If thou causest me to be violated against my will, my chastity will receive a double crown”; not that she has two aureoles of virginity, but that she will receive a double reward, one for observing virginity, the other for the outrage she has suffered.⁸

This suffering to which Aquinas attributes a “double reward” — a woman enduring sexual abuse from the enemies of her faith — was inflicted on the nineteenth-century Korean virgin martyrs Sts. Columba Kim Hyo-im and Agnes Kim Hyo-ju. Their persecutors, hoping to shame them into apostasy, left them naked for two days in a cell with male prisoners. Between this harrowing experience and their execution, Agnes couldn’t bring herself to speak of what had happened, but Columba lodged a complaint about the unlawful way they had been treated (which, remarkably, was heeded and taken seriously).⁹

Other saints known to have endured sexual violence are hard to find, but they do exist. St. Mary of Edessa, a fourth-century anchoress, may be the earliest recorded victim of clerical sexual abuse; a monk groomed her for a year before taking advantage of her.¹⁰ St. Theneva, a sixth-century Scottish princess, was impregnated by a rapist; her son, Kentigern, went on to become a saint himself.¹¹ Bl. Anna Yi Si-im, another Korean martyr, was trying to reach a secret community of Catholic virgins but found herself trapped into an abusive sham “marriage” and, like Theneva, pregnant with her abuser’s child, whom she raised on her own after the father died.¹² In heaven these women and Maria Goretti stand side by side, all having endured similar sufferings (if with different outcomes) and with transcendent beauty shining through their wounds.

The persistence of messages about purity or virginity being at stake in cases like Maria’s has less to do with anything in authentic Church teaching than with ideas coming down from honor culture about women being damaged or ruined by suffering rape. St. Theneva’s story, among others, dramatically illustrates this concept: her father, more concerned about the disgrace on his royal name than about his already traumatized child, drove her away and apparently even tried to kill her.¹³ Even when this stigma does not manifest itself in such radical rejection, it can still destroy the victim’s life; an instance appears in 2 Samuel 13, when King David’s son Amnon rapes his own sister Tamar. Following the crime, “Tamar dwelt, a desolate woman, in her brother Absalom’s house” (2 Sam 13:20). Both Tamar and those around her understand her to be damaged goods; her life is over. Nor does this way of thinking belong only to bygone centuries. St. Teresa of Calcutta recalls how it once posed an obstacle to her service: “When we were invited to take care of the young women of Bangladesh who had been raped by soldiers . . . the difficulties were great because accepting in society young women who had been raped went against both Hindu and Muslim laws.”¹⁴

Closer to home, among Catholics and evangelical Christians in the United States, “purity culture” has gained significant traction. This culture is a complex phenomenon deserving articles of its own. Briefly, the conception of purity in this atmosphere is not so much of a spiritual disposition of intellect and will as a metaphorical cleanness or intactness, easily lost or tainted, especially by women, and having mainly to do with shielding their bodies lest they cause men to sin. Even intercourse imposed on a woman may compromise it — unless, like Maria, she dies fighting back.¹⁵

In a sense, these attitudes are not surprising. People also suffer shame for coming from poverty or broken families. Somehow our human nature has a tendency to assign blame, even subconsciously or implicitly, for suffering misfortune.

But we are called to live by more than the tendencies of human nature. We are members of Christ, His Mystical Body, the earthly presence of the One Who showed compassion for every suffering presented to Him, including those His society considered a form of uncleanness (Mt 8:1–4, Lk 8:43–48) or punishment for sin (Jn 9:1–3). Going further, caring for those who suffer is not merely doing Christ’s work; it is serving Christ Himself. In every victim of sexual abuse, our Lord is crucified on earth again. Our mission is to be Simon helping to bear His load, Veronica wiping His bloody face, John and Mary Magdalene beside His cross.

Heroine of Charity

What, then, can we say about Maria Goretti? Is she not a heroine? Indeed she is. Her last hours show the extraordinary virtue that quietly grew up during her ordinary, unnoticed life, and that in some ways remains unnoticed.

If popular subjects and historical figures, as noted earlier, are especially subject to misunderstanding, popular saints are subject to an especially subtle form of confusion. We risk making them less than real people, reducing them to symbols or poster children for ideas we associate with them. Simcha Fisher, in another Patheos article, called this mindset “bathwater thinking”: “Bathwater thinking is when you forget the baby — the living, breathing, vulnerable persons in front of you — and instead, you wallow around in that warm, familiar bathwater of your indisputably worthy cause.”¹⁶

Maria Goretti, or her story as it is sometimes told, may have become a symbol of purity and virginity. But, as Fisher points out, saints are not symbols; they are real human beings, who become holy through concrete, personal love. In other words, saints do not become saints out of love for a virtue or concept; they live virtuous lives out of love for God and neighbor.

Maria’s heart was undoubtedly pure; after all, she is a canonized saint, and young children growing up in wholesome environments (especially prior to the all-pervasive internet) have little occasion even to know about the uglier sides of adult behavior. Is it shocking or sacrilegious to suggest that purity was probably not foremost in her thoughts when she was attacked? In most cases, one would assume the victim, whatever her age, would be thinking simply of her own safety, which would be entirely appropriate. However, we have the words recorded from Maria at the moment of the crime — words revealing an astonishingly powerful love.

Fisher gives an apt description: “When her would-be rapist attacked her, she pleaded with him to stop because he would be committing a mortal sin, and he would go to hell. She didn’t say, ‘Please, please, spare my virginity!’ She begged him to spare himself.”¹⁷ Confronted with a knife-wielding criminal, eleven-year-old Maria worried less for her own life than for his soul. Her Christlike love went far above and beyond what would be required or expected.

Her other best-known words came from her deathbed at the local hospital, where she was operated on without anesthetic: “Yes, for the love of Jesus I forgive him, and I want him to be in heaven with me.” This would be extraordinary enough coming from a grown woman after years of processing her trauma. It came from a little girl dying in agony from wounds inflicted hours earlier.

Maria continued, too, to show love to those around her, expressing concern for where her mother would sleep and telling a pharmacist who asked her to remember him in heaven that she would gladly think of him there.¹⁸ She died as she had lived, concerned with others even while she had more than her own share to endure.

A Friend to All

If we understand that the saints do not become less human when they pass into eternal life, that their arrival in heaven unites them with the One Who is with us always (Mt 28:20), it should not be hard to believe that they are as compassionate and caring after death as they were during their earthly lives. The girl who spent her life loving everyone around her, from her family to her murderer, will not ignore the pleas of the much larger family that she can help now.

For all children, the little ones so dearly loved by our Lord, Maria is a friend and protector. She offers them a model of holiness entirely within their reach, based on love of God and love of those around them. In particular, she is there to care for those who are exposed to hardships or dangers they should never have to face. She is a fitting saint to call on for children’s safety from those who would harm them, just as St. Josephine Bakhita is invoked against human trafficking.

For the world’s countless poor, rural or urban, endlessly working hard to provide for themselves and their families, Maria is an understanding friend, the girl who had to keep house and sell produce at an age when most children in the U.S. today are attending elementary school. Maria never got to attend school at all.

For all who grieve loved ones, Maria is near to bring comfort and strength, she who lost her father when she was only nine years old.

For those who have suffered sexual violence, Maria knows what you have been through, and she is praying for you, that your hearts might be healed and free, that you might know how loved and precious you are.

For those who, like Alessandro, are tempted by some grave sin, or have fallen into sin in ways that they struggle to believe can be forgiven — Maria loves you, as she loved the man who took her life. She wants to pull you up out of the dark, as she did for him by forgiving him and, from heaven, obtaining his conversion.

Perhaps this, after all, is why Maria is a patroness of purity. Recall that the Catechism definition of purity of heart (CCC §2518) lists its first element as charity. Lust destroys charity by reducing another person to an object, to be used to satisfy one’s own appetite. On the other hand, purity of heart is not merely absence of lust. The purity culture described earlier undoubtedly grew out of a zeal to oppose lust; but regarding another person as an occasion of sin is unlikely to foster charity, and thus to encourage genuine purity of heart. Why is charity so necessary? Because a heart alive with charity, one that sees others in the splendor of their transcendent dignity and goodness, is essential in order to treat them with due respect and love.

Maria Goretti’s heart was a glowing furnace of charity, and over a hundred years after her death, it still illumines the world. Only by imitating her love — the love that sees in others neither objects for pleasure nor occasions of sin, but brothers and sisters beloved by God and made for eternal glory — will we heal wounds, drive out darkness, and attain authentic purity of heart.

St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!