By JAMES MONTI
An 11-year-old peasant girl’s determination that chastity is a virtue worth dying for is captivating the hearts of thousands 113 years after she paid the ultimate price for her purity on a hot summer’s day in the Pontine Marshes of central Italy.
On September 16, at New York’s Kennedy Airport, the body of the virgin martyr St. Maria Goretti, the youngest canonized saint in Church history, arrived in the United States to begin a two-month “Pilgrimage of Mercy” tour across the East and Midwest.
Maria’s first stop (September 20) was quite fittingly the maximum security prison of Sing Sing in Ossining, N.Y. For her story is also very much about forgiveness and repentance. On her deathbed Maria forgave her 19-year-old murderer Alessandro Serenelli; and he in the course of serving a 30-year prison sentence for his crime was completely converted after experiencing in a dream a vision of Maria offering him 14 lilies, one for each of the stab wounds he had inflicted upon her.
At Sing Sing four inmates served as pallbearers for Maria, carrying her glass casket. Kneelers were set up for the prisoners to pray beside her.
Over the week that followed, Maria was venerated at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark, N.J., at several churches in Pennsylvania, and in New York at a church in Woodbury and at St. Agnes Cathedral in Rockville Centre. At one Philadelphia church the line of those waiting to see Maria stretched for several city blocks.
Inside the glass casket, Maria’s body (her skeleton) is enclosed within a waxen figure of her, robed in a white dress with a blue sash and crowned with a wreath of flowers. Resting upon her bosom and strung on a blue ribbon draped from her neck is a replica of the Children of Mary medal that was bestowed upon her by the priest who brought her Viaticum and who witnessed her words of forgiveness shortly before she died on July 6, 1902.
In the late evening of September 27, New York City’s busy Fifth Avenue was shut down by the New York Police Department and two other police agencies for the motorcade bearing Maria to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for two days of public veneration (September 28-29).
The little peasant girl who gave her life for God was treated like a beloved princess, coming down the avenue with an escort of 26 police cars. Maria’s casket was placed lengthwise at the foot of St. Patrick’s vast sanctuary, with public veneration beginning on the following morning after the 7:00 a.m. Mass.
When this correspondent arrived at the cathedral to venerate the saint (about 10:45 a.m.), the waiting line was surprisingly short — but after 11:00 the line grew rapidly. Quite a number of those coming to see Maria were Catholic high school students. Kneeling before the casket, they appeared genuinely moved as they reverently gazed upon the reliquary.
There were also a significant number of young adult women, who upon reaching the casket and dropping to their knees bowed their heads in intense prayer and pressed their hands to the glass. One sensed that conversions of heart were taking place and promises were being made to follow Maria’s example of purity.
Shortly before the noon Mass, Maria’s casket was turned to the position in which coffins are placed for funeral Masses. The red vestments of the two priests concelebrating the Mass and the prayers for the day’s two memorials (the Czech martyr St. Wenceslaus and the Philippine martyr St. Lawrence Ruiz and his companions) harmonized well with the presence of the Church’s youngest canonized martyr.
I had a front-row seat. There was something indescribable about attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion so near to her sacred remains. Afterward I went onto the waiting line a second time to venerate Maria again. There is a powerful aura about the saint’s presence that makes it very difficult to leave even after having had a full opportunity to venerate her.
When it came time to carry Maria out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral following the conclusion of veneration there on September 29, police officers served as three of Maria’s four pallbearers, pausing to pray with the pilgrimage director Fr. Carlos Martins, CC, at the church door before bearing the casket down the steps. At stop after stop Fr. Martins, in his Mass homilies and by his video presentation, has been spreading the message of Maria’s example by recounting the saint’s harrowing martyrdom, her incredible mercy, and the miraculous efficacy of her intercession.
Maria has been making her way from place to place in a fleet of three vehicles, all painted in white and bearing the logo of the “Pilgrimage of Mercy” tour with Maria’s picture. A large camper-like truck provides a mobile headquarters for the staff and their supplies; it tows a trailer, to which is firmly anchored a Ford van that serves as the “hearse” for Maria’s casket. Behind, an SUV is driven as the “chase car” for the fleet, protecting the all-important van on the trailer from the possibility of a rear-end collision.
And everywhere the convoy goes, it is accompanied and guarded by a contingent of state and local police. Six officers of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have also been assigned to oversee the safety of the relic during its U.S. tour.
After visits to the New York City boroughs of Staten Island (September 30) and Brooklyn (October 1-2), and to Nashua, N.H. (October 3), Maria was welcomed at Boston’s Holy Cross Cathedral by Sean Cardinal O’Malley, OFM Cap., with a large delegation from the Knights of Columbus.
Holy Cards
On October 6 Maria arrived at St. Theresa’s Church in Trumbull, Conn., for a full day of veneration that began at 10:00 a.m. and ran well into the late evening past 11:45 p.m. It is estimated that during this time the number of those coming to see Maria topped 18,000, a turnout of truly epic proportions.
That day I went two more times to visit the saint in the company of my very good friends, the Dewey family. There was a large police presence to manage the massive number of cars, which filled to overflowing all the nearby parking lots — the police officers seemed to be enjoying their assignment.
At each stop of the tour, organizers give visitors not only holy cards of St. Maria but also pictures of her repentant murderer Alessandro Serenelli as a reminder of how Maria’s heroic willingness to forgive her attacker ultimately transformed him from a hardened criminal into a penitent so devoted to God that he is even considered a potential candidate for beatification.
During the Trumbull veneration many families with young children came. I saw also a Franciscan friar in his traditional brown robe kneel down at Maria’s feet to spend an extended time intently contemplating her. When my turn came, I was afforded the opportunity to kneel facing the end of the casket where Maria’s head is. The top of the waxen figure enclosing her virtually intact skeleton is very close to the glass here.
I felt blessed to be so extremely near her at this moment as I touched a handful of religious pictures to the casket. Organizers make a point of explaining that religious objects touched to the reliquary are thereby rendered third-class relics. They also encourage visitors to touch pictures of their loved ones to the casket as a very fitting way of invoking Maria’s intercession for them.
In the evening there was a Mass in honor of St. Maria Goretti attended by so many that it lasted almost two hours. When we arrived to venerate Maria, the wait on line to see her took an hour, but no one was complaining. Inside the church, many lingered in the pews long after having had their turn to venerate Maria’s body, continuing their prayers as priests heard Confessions.
The Knights of Columbus rendered their own tribute to Maria by posting an honor guard directly behind her casket, with a ceremonial changing of the guard every 15 minutes.
A Plenary Indulgence
The expressions of faith I witnessed that night in Trumbull will remain with me for a lifetime. I saw a tiny girl of about six go up to the casket seven times over the course of an hour or so, bowing her head in fervent prayer each time as she knelt beside Maria — the child seemed irresistibly drawn to the saint by some supernatural invitation. I prayed that this little angel might become a saint herself someday.
I also observed police officers going up to have their own time with the martyr whom they were there to protect and honor. Close to the end I saw a police sheriff in full uniform, evidently from the Connecticut State Police, devoutly kneel down to spend about a minute in prayer beside Maria’s casket.
Just as this article is being written (October 12), Maria is en route to Chicago in a grand motorcade from the Illinois-Indiana state border escorted by the Illinois State Police and Chicago Police Department.
The latter is to post an Honor Guard at St. John Cantius Church, where Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry is to celebrate for Maria a Solemn Pontifical Mass in the Extraordinary Form, with veneration of Maria’s body continuing through the night of October12-13. The little saint is to spend her birthday (October 16) appropriately at a church bearing her name in Madison, Wis.
The unchanging truths about chastity, marriage, and family life that are the subject of the Synod on the Family in Rome can all be found within this glass casket that is touring our country — untold thousands are finding this to be so. The Holy See has issued a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions to all venerating the saint’s body during this “Pilgrimage of Mercy.”
I urge all our readers who live in or within driving distance of the places Maria has yet to visit before completing her tour — Chantilly, Va. (October 22), Greensboro and Charlotte, N.C. (October 23-24), Atlanta and Duluth, Ga. (October 26-27), Jacksonville, Ocala, and Orlando, Fla. (October 28-30), Baton Rouge, La. (October 31-November 1), Tyler, Dallas, Sugar Land, and Houston, Texas (November 2-6) and Oklahoma City, Collinsville, and Tulsa, Okla. (November 9-11) — do everything you can to go and venerate this beautiful young saint. Maria will give you the courage to face whatever the future may bring.
For further details of the pilgrimage tour schedule, please visit the Pilgrimage of Mercy website: mariagoretti.com.
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