St. Maria Goretti is one of the youngest saints of the Roman
Catholic Church. She died a martyr to preserve and seal with her
blood, her love of Jesus and her loyalty to God’s commandment.
St. Maria Goretti was beatified by Pope Pius XII on April 27,
- Among the vast crowd that thronged St. Peter’s Basilica …
the Holy Father congratulated the mother for the “incomparable
happiness of having seen her daughter elevated to the honors of
the altar.” Maria, he added, is the mature fruit of a Christian home
with its old, simple method of education, “of a home where one
prays, where the children are brought up in the fear of God, in
obedience to their parents, in the love of truth and self-respect;
accustomed to be satisfied with little and to give a helping hand.”
Comparing Maria with St. Agnes, the Pope remarked that “the
delicate grace of these adolescent girls might make us overlook
their courage; yet strength is the virtue of virgins and martyrs…
“Our Beata was a strong soul. She knew and understood; and
that is precisely why she preferred to die. She was not merely an
innocent ‘ingenue,’ instinctively frightened by the shadow of sin.
She was not sustained solely by a natural feeling of modesty. No,
though still young, she already gave signs of the intensity and
depth of her love for the Divine Redeemer…”
The Holy Father then denounced present-day public immorality
and called on Catholics to react boldly.
