Saint Maria Goretti

By Marie C. Buehrle

St. Maria Goretti became a martyr at the young age of 12 years old. Her heroic resistance to a familiar evil and the ultimate conversion of her assassin is an inspiration for all. 15 Illustrations throughout the book. She is compared to the brave St. Agnes who also gave her life to avoid sin. Patron saint of youth, young women, purity, and victims of rape. A powerful story of forgiveness.—Print ed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: Apr 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839743375

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SAINT MARIA GORETTI

BY

MARIE CECILIA BUEHRLE

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 5

DEDICATION 6

PREFACE 7

PART I—INTRODUCTION—AT THE HOLY DOOR 8

PART II—AS HAVING NOTHING 18

1 NUMBER THIRTY-SEVEN 18

2 I HAVE SEEN HIM! 19

3 THE FIRST GIFT 23

4 SHE HAS COME! 24

5 MUD IN THE HARBOR 27

6 WHEN SHALL IT BE? 30

7 NO FLOWER IN HER HAIR 32

8 TO FARTHER FIELDS 35

9 ASSUNTA ON GUARD 41

10 IN GOD’S HANDS 45

11 LOCKED LARDERS 48

12 LESS THAN NOTHING 51

13 HOW LOVELY ARE THY TABERNACLES! 55

14 IN THE TALL GRASSES 64

15 TIGHTENING TENSIONS 67

16 NO! NO! NO! 72

17 VIA CRUCIS 78

18 THE MADONNA IS WAITING 82

19 UNDER COVER OF NIGHT 89

20 LIKE A LAMP 91

21 TAKE THEM! 92

22 INCIPIT VITA NOVA 94

23 ALONG THE VIA ROMA 97

24 SILENT NIGHT, HOLY NIGHT! 100

PART III—MARIA, SANTA! 104

MARIA, SANTA! 104

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 109

DEDICATION

TO ASSUNTA

MOTHER OF MARIA GORETTI

"To understand Maria it is necessary

first of all to know her mother."

PREFACE

IT is with great pleasure that I welcome this American publication of the Life of the Virgin and Martyr, Maria Goretti, rightly called the St. Agnes of our time. I feel sure that all who will read this Life, written with penetration and a loving heart, will grow to love her and become her devotees.

Her pending canonization will bear witness—if indeed there be any need of it—that Christ’s promise to His disciples, Behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20), is daily realized in His Church, the one Church which, besides this mark of sanctity, can also exhibit as proofs of her divine origin the further notes of unity, catholicity, and apostolic succession.

May God deign to bless this Life, and through the intercession of St. Maria Goretti bring its readers to a greater appreciation of those ideals for which she gave up her life.

M. CARD. CANALI

Vatican City

May 10, 1950

PART I—INTRODUCTION—AT THE HOLY DOOR

EVER SINCE Peter and Paul walked the Appian Way and John stood before the Latin Gate, ready to die, saints have become a part of the inmost life of Rome. The very ground upon which one walks is bedded over the dark and tortuous paths that martyrs knew. Church upon church shelters sacred remains, and visitors may come and go in places that were once the homes where Cecilia, Frances of Rome, or Brigitta of Sweden lived. They may walk at ease through rooms once occupied by St. Philip Neri, St. Aloysius, or Cardinal Bellarmine. Saints are an old, old story in Rome; but its people have been roused to new enthusiasm by a lovely child of the fields, whose life was hidden in the dead lands of the Pontine Marshes, and who found her prison and her martyrdom in her own humble kitchen.

Since her beatification on April 27, 1947 gradually, like the first tricklings of a waterfall, the story of Maria Goretti has come into our land. Heretofore there were individuals, now and then, who recalled the tragic incidents of her death, her heroic resistance to a familiar evil, the ultimate conversion of her assassin. Within the last year, however, more publications have circulated the details of her life. More and more relics have been sent from Rome to stimulate devotion to this child of less than twelve years, who has been called a second St. Agnes.

The waterfall is gathering momentum. It is an overflow from the living waters stored in the mighty reservoirs of the Eternal City in order that they may carry refreshment and the power of growth to the arid places of the world. The many fountains of Rome, above all the tossing twin waters that rise and fall in the square of St. Peter’s, may well be regarded as a symbol of the hidden spiritual springs from which Rome, as a city not built with hands, draws its inexhaustible life.

To these spiritual forces Maria Goretti has made a contribution that is peculiarly her own. She belongs to modern life, not in its far-reaching opportunities and generally improved living conditions, but under its aspects of poverty and privation. For her, even at the age of ten, there was no eight-hour working day. In a time that has increasingly stressed education as an indispensable need, she knew neither how to read nor how to write; but she knew better than others how to live and how to die. Modern sanitation has drained the Pontine Marshes; but when Maria lived there, they were the most dank and diseased spot upon the face of Italy. The dramatic heroism of her death had its source in a life of stark reality that for drabness has had few equals; yet no young girl of the twentieth century has risen more rapidly to a popularity that promises to be worldwide.

In Rome she is loved not only with the veneration accorded to a martyr and a saint, but with the fondness that one lavishes upon someone familiarly dear. She is near as the present moment to the Italian people. Her family is still among them; and best of all, her mother, the one who under heaven was the most powerful influence in the shaping of her character and therefore of her destiny, is alive today. The desire to see this wondrous mother was one of the forces that drew me to Italy, I was eager to recreate the story of Maria Goretti, and to understand Maria it is necessary, first of all, to know her mother, Assunta.

Beautiful was the landscape, deeply moving our meeting at the end of the journey to Corinaldo, the birthplace of Maria Goretti, and after the tragedy, once more the home of her mother. Corinaldo lies within the province of Ancona, and the journey of six hours by train from Rome leads through a singing hill country of vineyards, planted fields, and olive groves, then along the Adriatic to the old cathedral town of Senigallia which is the birthplace of Pius IX and also of Assunta. No train touches the steepled little city of Corinaldo, compact as a castle, on its hilltop. My Italian companion and I had driven perhaps for fifteen minutes when, after rising from a wide and fertile valley, a short curve revealed it on the height above us, resplendent in the sunshine of mid-afternoon.

Everyone knows where Assunta lives. The driver left us in a narrow street in front of a flat-fronted brick building with a tile roof and green shutters. It is but a few steps away from an opening in the wall of the city and beside it the street slants upward to the Church of St. Francis where Maria was baptized and confirmed.

I followed my companion out of the warm sunshine and with tense expectancy climbed the worn stone stairs, passing door after door, knowing that one of them must open into the home of Maria’s mother. On the way we met a smiling young woman dressed in black, with a gentle, courteous manner, and of her my companion made inquiry. Before I knew who she was, a sudden recognition leaped into my consciousness. I saw an oval face with a fair and glowing complexion, warm brown eyes, waving chestnut hair, and I felt that here was someone belonging to Maria Goretti.

The impression was valid. She is the daughter of Ersilia and the niece of Maria. Her husband, a sailor, is seldom at home. She therefore, with her four-year-old son, Marco, lives with her parents, her grandmother Assunta, and her two brothers, Carlo, who is grown, and Piero, the little boy who received his First Holy Communion from Cardinal Canali on the day of Maria’s beatification.

Graciously Marica, as they call her, led the way into a neat little sitting room and in a few moments Assunta on her crutches was crossing the outer hall and coming toward us. I went to meet her and without ceremony walked into the presence of one of the great ones of the earth. She is great in her elemental simplicity, great in her fervor, great in the work that was given her to do, great above all in her humility. Ever since I had become familiar with Maria’s story I had looked upon Assunta as something sacred, beautiful in her suffering and in her strength. Despite her more than eighty years, her bent back, and the injury that makes it impossible for her to walk unaided, there is a native vigor about her, a mental alertness that shows no deterioration. In her there is a certain strength in having lived long and endured much, a power of the spirit that triumphs over the infirmities of age.

With Assunta I needed no intermediary. She accepted me at once, probably as she does all people and all things, directly and at first hand, without the barrier of artificiality or convention. Our words of greeting were few; but she knew that Maria was the inner tie, and her eyes spoke, and her hand trembled in mine. I wish that I might describe Assunta’s eyes. I have never seen any quite like them. They seem to open a profound world where sorrow is saturate with light, where gratitude and yearning and awe meet in mysterious union. For a long time I sat beside her. Her hand remained in mine and I felt the quivering of it. We did not speak much. She was willing to tell what she could; but I should have found it difficult to cross-question her. It was wonderful just to be near her and to remember the things that had happened to her.

From the beginning of my interest in the story of Maria Goretti I knew that material was scant, that everything of interest to the outside world was concentrated within the dramatic incident of her death and in the ultimate conversion of her murderer. While still in America, trying to fashion the story at long distance, I had hoped that some of the color of Italy might glow along its margins, I had, for instance, envisioned the festivities of harvest time as filling the picture and enlivening the story with the song and dance of the peasantry. Eagerly I asked Assunta: Did Maria ever dance? But Assunta shook her head; no, Maria had not danced. Did she sing sometimes? I urged, holding to a thin thread of hope. That too snapped in a moment with the straightforward answer: She sang to her brothers and sisters. And the colors vanished from the picture that I had meant to paint.

With conviction I had dressed Maria in white for her First Holy Communion. I had, at least on that day, wanted to give her a ride to church in the cart of some friend; but Maria walked to the church in Conca and her dress was not white, but red, or rather wine color with white dots. I had wished especially to learn something concerning Assunta’s romance and her marriage to Luigi. Maria was so outstandingly the daughter of Assunta, the result of her shaping hands, that it seemed fitting to begin the story with that of her mother. Many possibilities that at long distance might have seemed authentic were dispelled by a closer range of vision and a better understanding of Italian country life.

Perhaps the profound love of Luigi and Assunta, of which Maria is the symbol, could never reflect itself in its native vigor through the prismatic colorings of the obviously picturesque. I hesitated to question Assunta upon this subject; but, having noticed the enlarged picture of Luigi in his military uniform hanging upon the wall, I ventured the comment that this was the picture of which the postulator had sent me a copy. She lifted her eyes to the picture and something akin to a suppressed groan escaped her, just as it had at the first mention of Maria’s name. There was nothing dramatic about it; but it was a revelation, utterly spontaneous, that