July 6 is the feast of St. Maria Goretti (1890-1902), the Italian virgin-martyr and patron of youth. Born at Corinaldo, in the Marche, to a peasant family, she moved with her family to Ferriere di Conca, in the Pontine Marshes, after her father's death in 1900. On July 5, 1902, at the age of eleven, she was stabbed fourteen times by Alessandro Serenelli, the eighteen-year-old son of the family her widowed mother had taken in, for refusing his sexual advances. She died the next day, after forgiving him.
Alessandro was sentenced to thirty years in prison. In a dream, eight years into his sentence, he saw Maria gathering lilies in a field and offering them to him; the dream was the beginning of his conversion. He was released in 1929, and in 1936 he attended Maria's beatification, sitting in the crowd beside her mother, who had forgiven him years before. He became a Capuchin lay brother and died in 1970. Maria was canonized in 1950 by Pope Pius XII, in the presence of her mother and of Alessandro.
The body of Maria Goretti lies in the Sanctuary of Nostra Signora delle Grazie at Nettuno, near Rome, and her relics are venerated at the Sanctuary of Santa Maria Goretti at Corinaldo. From Nettuno, where she is buried, to Corinaldo, where she was born, the July 6 feast is the feast of the young martyr who forgave her murderer and converted him by her intercession.
