Anatomy of a senseless killing

(There follows a long screed on the main subject, so I would advise you now that the second photo uploaded for this date is a late-afternoon view westwards from Corinaldo, across the foothills to the mountains of the Appenines.)


In the later 19th and early 20th century there was extensive rural poverty in Italy; this was so acute that it prompted a total of 9,000,000 Italians to emigrate to Northern and Southern America.

One poor rural Corinaldo family, the Gorettis, decided to find work elsewhere within Italy. They eventually moved to a village south of Rome, on an estate where they had secured an offer of work.  There they were provided with accommodation in half of a large farm building, sharing cooking facilities with the Serinelli family who lived in the other half.

The area was marshy, and father Goretti died of malaria in 1896.  Mother Goretti had therefore no option but to go to work on the land, and young daughter "Marietta" (Maria) was given the task of doing the housework - cleaning, washing shopping, cooking - while her five siblings also went to work on the land.

Naturally the Gorettis were on good terms with their neighbours the Serinellis, who were a profoundly troubled family: the mother, who had reputedly tried to drown her son Alessandro when he was a baby, had died in a lunatic asylum; the father is claimed to have been an alcoholic; and another son was in a lunatic asylum.

In 1902 Alessandro was 20 years old and Marietta 11 years old.  Alessandro had developed a fixation on Marietta, and several times tried to seduce her.  Finally he attempted to rape her, and when he did not succeed he stabbed her 14 times with a sharpened awl.  The poor girl died after a day of agony.

At the time of the killing Marietta was 11 months and 9 months old.  Her age needs to be seen in the context of its time: the age of consent in Scotland and Spain was then 12 years, in England it was 13 years.  I have not managed to establish whether there was a set age of consent in Italy then, but Marietta may well have reached an age when she would be expected to start thinking about courting.

Alessandro pleaded insanity at his trial, but was considered sane by the court and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment for murder.

These are the core facts, but so far I have on purpose omitted the religious factors surrounding this killing and its aftermath.

It is clear that Marietta was a keen, pious churchgoer and a believer in the teachings of the Catholic church insofar as she was able to understand them at that age.

A priest was at her bedside as she lay dying, and it was the priest who provided a record of what was said there.  In response to the priest's admonition that she should forgive Alessandro, she replied:
"Yes, I forgive him and want him to be in Paradise with me some day."

MIRACLES.  My understanding is that these are needed in order to trigger a sainthood.

The first miracle was the curing of a two year old girl with heart problems on touching the urn containing Marietta's remains.

The second miracle was, I understand, Alessandro's dream in his 8th year of emprisonment.  A third-party's report of this reads as follows:

The dream was so vivid he could not distinguish it from reality. The prison bars and walls fell away and his cell was a sunlit garden blooming with flowers. Towards him came a beautiful girl dressed in pure white. He said to himself: 'How is this? Peasant girls wear darkish clothes.' But he saw it was Marietta. She was walking among flowers, smiling, and without the least fear. He wanted to flee from her but could not. Marietta picked white lilies and handed them to him saying, 'Alessandro, take them!' He accepted the lilies, one by one, fourteen of them. But a strange thing took place. As he received them from her fingers, the lilies did not remain lilies but changed into so many flaming lights. There was a lily turned to purifying flame for every one of the 14 mortal blows he struck her on the fatal day in Ferriere. Marietta said smilingly, 'Alessandro, as I have promised, your soul shall someday reach me in heaven.'
Contentment entered his breast. And the scene of incredible beauty dissolved in silence. When he awoke, it seemed that the rabid, choking, consuming feelings of hate, destruction, and bitterness that ruled within him were loosening their invisible bonds from his mind and flesh.

Marietta was beatified in 1947 and canonised as a saint in 1950.
Alessandro died in 1970.

Here are the words of Alessandro from a letter written in his late seventies:

Looking back at my past, I can see that in my early youth, I chose a bad path which led me to ruin myself.

My behavior was influenced by print, shows ("spettacoli") and bad examples which are followed by the majority of young people without even thinking. And I did the same. I was not worried.....

I hope this letter that I wrote can teach others the happy lesson of avoiding evil and of always following the right path, like little children. I feel that religion with its precepts is not something we can live without, but rather it is the real comfort, the real strength in life and the only safe way in every circumstance, even the most painful ones of life.

What strikes me from the available photos of Alessandro is that he was simple-minded.  At the time of this letter he had retired to a Capuchin monastery, and Marietta had been elevated to sainthood several years earlier.  Whether Alessandro could ever read or write is not clear: he had left school at the age of seven.

From my perspective the treatment and manipulation of this case raises a lot of queries, but the sanctification - or perhaps martyrdom? -  of this poor girl is probably more appropriate than that of many others in the church's long list of saints.


The photo above is of Marietta's birthplace in Corinaldo, a charming little house which now incorporates a small chapel and lies just outside the medieval town.