Our Patrons
Alessandro Serenelli and St. Maria Goretti
Our namesake, Alessandro Serenelli, lived what our community is for: a life of perseverance in conversion flowing from the acceptance of forgiveness. His story is wholly bound up in the story of St. Maria Goretti. In recent years, those who hear about St. Maria Goretti are becoming more familiar with Alessandro as well, and devotion to him is growing. This is a great sign. Unfortunately, there is as much resistance to accepting his fully story, and even St. Maria’s. This is a symptom of the western secular rejection of the Gospel, exacerbated by the sex abuse crisis. Yet their story is a dramatic, and very real, living out of the life of Jesus Christ. Their story speaks of particularly Christian values and virtues: poverty of spirit, virginity, purity, obedience to parents, obedience to God’s laws, self-sacrifice, martyrdom, total forgiveness, mercy, conversion, humility, resistance to temptation, and perseverance. These may cause some readers to scratch their heads in dismay. They stand in stark contrast to the wisdom of the world. Their story is one for which we have contemporary history of the people and events, with eyewitness statements, letters, the trial, and the artifacts. This frees it from the tendency in circles of devotion to paint a better picture than is there.
Those who have suffered from abuse can feel unnerved by Maria’s and Alessandro’s story. Questions inevitably arise: why wouldn’t she tell her mother about Alessandro’s advances so that this wouldn’t have happened? Why couldn’t I courageously resist my abuser the way she did? Why did she get to die when I have to keep living with the pain of my abuse? How could she forgive such a monster, he took everything from her? Why can’t I forgive? Is her story a judgment on me because I can’t forgive? How is it fair that he didn’t get sentenced to death or at least life in prison? How come he gets to be forgiven after committing such a heinous crime? In answer to the first question at least, let us not be found guilty of blaming the victim. Instead, we invite you to take a closer look at their lives. You will find that there is no judgment in Maria Goretti or Alessandro Serenelli, and perhaps the both of them have something to give to those who get to know them.
We present a detailed synopsis of the lives of Alessandro Serenelli and St. Maria Goretti. It is a synthesis drawn from several printed and online sources, including: Alessandro Serenelli A Story of Forgiveness by Charles Engel, St. Maria Goretti In Garments All Red by Fr. Godfrey Poage C.P., and St. Maria Goretti by Marie Cecilia Buehrle. It also includes some historical context to fill out the picture.
Alessandro was born in Ancona, Italy, on June 2, 1882. His childhood was both traumatic and chaotic. His own mother suffered from mental illness, breaking down after her son Gaspare, Alessandro’s older brother, died in an asylum following a seizure at school that left him mentally disabled. In her deteriorated mental state, she tried to drown 3-year-old Alessandro in a well, but his older brother Pietro saved him. His mother was remitted to an asylum, the same one Gaspare died in. When Alessandro was only 11 or 12 years old, he set off on his own, or maybe his father simply sent him off, to live and work on the shores and docks of the Adriatic Sea. During these years he was exposed to the ways and speech of the sailors and how they treated women. Alessandro was the only one in his family who could read from the little schooling he had received, no more than a year and a half. He was a reserved and internal kid, smart but struggled socially, and had no friends. The others at the docks made fun of him for his ability to read, but with that ability he read anything he could get his hands on, including novels containing graphic depictions of violence. While the others lived external lives visiting brothels and looking at pornography, Alessandro lived an interior life, conjuring up images with his mind’s eye.
When Alessandro was 15, his brother Pietro convinced him to leave his life on the docks and to go help his father, Giovani, who had become an alcoholic and was sharecropping as a farmer in Olevano Romano. Shortly after joining him, they moved to nearby Paliano in 1898. It was in Paliano that Alessandro first met eight-year-old Maria Goretti. His father decided to partner with the Goretti family as they set out for another opportunity on Count Mazzoleni’s estate in Nettuno at Le Ferriere di Conca. The Gorettis were a poor farming family from Corinaldo. They were forced to move from their ancestral home where their small farm could not sustain them.
This was taking place right at the beginning of Italy’s industrial revolution, between 50-150 years behind the other Western countries. Italy had only been reunified as a county in 1870. Between the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 400’s AD and the reunification in 1870, Italy was a collection of small kingdoms, often warring with each other or conquered and ruled by larger powers such as France and Spain. The two poor farming families were caught in the middle of two eras, the old agrarian world of peasants and nobles, and the new political and industrialized world that promised a better future through technological advances, political liberalism, and constitutional government, but which came with much upheaval and class struggle.
The Gorettis and Serenellis lived in the band of Italy that was formerly the Papal States only a few decades prior. The reunification of Italy was led by a political movement that was
anti-clerical. It is important to note that at that time in Italy, to be anti-clerical was not necessarily to be anti-Catholic. Most of those in the political movement were Catholics, as the vast majority of Italy at the time was Catholic. Because the Papal States ran through the middle of the peninsula from coast to coast, the new government under King Victor Emmanuel annexed these territories, precipitating the Roman Question. Maria’s whole life took place in the final years of Pope Leo XIII, right in the heart of the Roman Question. Leo XIII died just over one year after Maria, on July 20, 1903, after one of the longest papal reigns in history. Maria’s story spread so quickly and was so well-known, even if not in all its detail, that Leo’sLeo’s successor, Pope St. Pius X, publicly praised Maria’s virtue. His familiarity with the story comes into play later on as well. In 1891, Leo XIII published his famous encyclical Rerum Novarum, that addressed the social and economic issues of the time caused by the Industrial Revolution, treating on the rights of workers, and articulating Catholic social teaching. Poor farmers of the peasant class were certainly on the receiving end of the negative consequences of the political, economic, and industrial revolutions. Sharecroppers faired better and enjoyed more rights in this part than in the industrialized north and the poor south where farmers were derided, but work and life was grinding none-the-less. Le Ferriere di Conca was located a few miles from Rome in the Pontine Marshes, which at the time were hotbeds of malaria. The house that the combined families occupied was an old cheese factory that had been abandoned for some time.
Maria’s parents, Luigi and Assunta Goretti, were devout Catholics and completely devoted to each other. Luigi spent time in the Italian military in his early twenties. Assunta had never seen anything but Corinaldo. They were married February 5, 1885. Their firstborn, Antonio, died in infancy. After Antonio they had six more children between 1888 and 1900: Angelo, (St.) Maria, Mariano, Alessandro, Ersilia, and Teresa. Maria was the oldest daughter, born October 16, 1890. She was just six years old when the family emigrated to Paliano for work in 1896.
Luigi and Assunta raised their children with a strong devotion to Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mother, praying the rosary daily, attending Mass every Sunday and feast day, walking several miles to church. They entrusted their whole life to God and the intercession of Mary. They knew their faith was a gift, and they wanted their children to grow up to be holy and pleasing to God in that faith. It is what sustained them through every hardship and tragedy, which was about to visit the Goretti family very soon.
Maria’s youngest sister Teresa was born in February 1900. In the spring of that year, her father Luigi came down with a fever and such severe fatigue that he could not get out of bed to harvest the fields. He was diagnosed with typhus, malaria, pneumonia, and meningitis. Maria took care of household tasks so that Assunta could be at his bedside, all the while praying fervently for his recovery. As he lay on his deathbed, he told Assunta to return to Corinaldo. Ten days after his diagnosis, Luigi died on May 6, 1900. The Lord does answer prayers, but not always in the way we want. Maria learned this most difficult lesson at nine and a half years old. What God did not see fit to give in healing her father, he gave her in strength of soul for the new responsibility on her shoulders. With her husband departed, Assunta had to go to the fields to bring in the harvest, and Maria would have to take over the household management for the Gorettis and the Serenellis. It was that, or they would be out on the streets. Many children, even today, have to grow up before their years and have their childhood cut off. Maria knows what this is like.
After the passing of her father, Maria’s personality became notably serious and to the point. She was still tender towards her younger siblings for whom she cared, completely obedient to her mother, and more devoted than ever to her faith. Yet, the tragedy of her father’s death and her new responsibilities brought her face to face with the starkest realities of life. Perhaps it was this that steeled her will to make her first communion. She often asked Assunta to be able to make her first communion. This was early for the time. The typical age was 12, but she was only 10. Assunta was concerned that she would not be able to receive the catechesis for it because of the demands of the farm work and their illiteracy. Maria worked things out to get her chores done early and attend classes at Count Mazzoleni’s villa. She committed everything to memory, taught each lesson to her siblings, and when Assunta had the priest examine her for her readiness, she demonstrated how well she was prepared.
The day of her First Holy Communion came in 1902, most likely on the feast of Corpus Christi, which was the tradition in that area at the time. The whole town contributed to help Maria dress for the occasion: a red dress with white dots, veil, trim shoes, ivory candle, wreathe of flowers, necklace, and earrings. Before going to church, Maria went to every member of the household and asked their forgiveness for her faults, including Alessandro. This is even more poignant when we realize that on at least two occasions in the months leading up to this day he had made sexual advances on her. She flatly rejected his proposals. He threatened to kill her if she told anyone, and even though she nearly shared this information, she decided against it for the added reason that she did not want her mother to move the family away and face more hardships. At the Church of the Annunciation she stood out among the other first communicants for her attention, recollection, silence, and seriousness in savoring the moments after the Mass was complete, continuing her communion in her heart. Jesus, the Divine Spouse, the One who could never and would never do her harm, her Strength and her Comfort, had united her to himself.
On Saturday, July 5, 1902, only a month after her first communion, Maria was looking forward to receiving Jesus the next day. In those days, this would be the feast of the Precious Blood of Christ, celebrated on the first Sunday of July. As Maria made her plans for Mass the next day, she did not know that she, who was looking forward to being united to the Savior in his body and blood, would shed her own blood in obedience to his commandments that very day.
Maria was careful to avoid being alone with Alessandro after his attempts on her, but their families shared the house, and he was always watching for an opportunity. While Maria planned for Mass, he carefully planned and set his trap. After lunch, which Maria cooked for everyone, he asked her to mend a torn shirt laid out on his bed. The sleeve was mangled, probably on purpose; it would be a long sewing job. He went out with Assunta and the other children to hitch up the oxen to the cart to thresh beans while Maria stayed to clean up and work on more tasks, the shirt being the first. She sat at the top of the stairs that led into the kitchen mending the shirt with her 2-year-old sister Teresa sleeping at her feet. Alessandro excused himself from the bean threshing, saying he’d forgotten something in the house. Assunta took over driving the cart, which drowned out other noises around it. He went and pulled out a metal awl that he had sharpened to a fine point, then climbed up the stairs where Maria was, going straight past her at first. He called to her to come for a second in the kitchen, but she continued sewing as if she did not hear him. He tried again, and she replied that he could tell her what he wanted outside. He grabbed her and dragged her into the kitchen, leaving Teresa where she was sleeping on the landing. This went unnoticed by his father Giovani, who was napping under the staircase. Inside the kitchen he held the weapon up to her and threatened that if she did not do what he told her, he would kill her. She struggled fiercely to keep her dress down, telling him “no” and that what he wanted to do is a sin and that he would go to hell for it. Recalling this moment later, Alessandro said something snapped in him. He flew into a rage an stabbed Maria nine times. She dropped to the floor, losing consciousness, and he went to hide in his room. She came to and summoned her strength to reach for the door latch to unlock it and call for help. Alessandro heard the latch flip, so he came out and stabbed her five more times for a total of 14 wounds. He thrusted so hard that the blade went all the way through Maria, and one time hit her spine and blunted the tip of the blade. She fell unconscious again and he again retreated to his room after hastily hiding the weapon.
Teresa, meanwhile, had awoken and began to cry at the commotion. This woke Giovani, who went to check why Maria was not attending to the baby. When he came into the kitchen he found Maria in her blood-soaked dress on the floor. In horror he called for Assunta and for help. Very quickly news spread, and a crowd gathered. Assunta held Maria as they waited for an ambulance. She asked her who did this. Maria replied that it was Alessandro. She asked her why he did this. Maria said simply that he wanted to do shameful things to her.
Maria was taken by horse-drawn cart to the nearest hospital seven grueling miles away on cobblestone for emergency surgery. Alessandro was quickly found in his room and arrested, saved from mob execution only because Count Mazzoleni called for the police and they took him out under guard to be booked at the local precinct. One story relates that as Maria’s ambulance made its way to the hospital, they were passed by Alessandro surrounded by the police horses escorting him, hands tied together and tethered to the horses. Maria was desperate for water, but they could not give her any due to the perforations in her intestines. The water would leak through and cause sepsis. One priest relates that the priest accompanying her said to her “Maria, Jesus asked for water on the cross, but none was given to him. Can you offer this up for a poor sinner.” She replied yes and never asked for water again.
At the hospital, they performed emergency surgery to save her life. Because of her youth and blood loss, they could not give her anesthesia for fear that it would kill her. Maria felt every movement of the surgeon’s blade and stitch. After hours of surgery under these conditions, they realized the damage was too much and they could not save her. She surprisingly survived through the night. Because of hospital policy, not even Assunta was allowed to stay at her bedside during those hours. She could do nothing but stay outside the hospital and pray, wondering at every moment if her daughter had passed. The next day the parish priest, Dom Temistocle Signori, administered last rites to her. Assunta had the chance to ask her more questions about Alessandro and the attack. Everyone was convinced that Maria was a saint, a martyr even, comparing her to St. Agnes, but Dom Signori wanted to there to be no doubt of her heroic virtue before death, so he asked her a most Christian question: “Do you forgive your attacker?” Maria paused for a second and looked to the crucifix hanging in the room. Our Savior, the One she followed so closely through the immense trials and labors of her short life, taught his disciples to forgive not seven times, but seventy times seven times. He not only taught them to forgive, but then he lived his own teaching on the cross, crying out “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34) Maria, who had just received this same Jesus in Viaticum, the Bread for the journey, drew strength from the Crucified, and replied “For the love of Jesus, I do forgive Alessandro Serenelli, and I want him to be in heaven with me.” Shortly thereafter, she went into her last agony, where in a dreamlike state her mind and body relived the attack and those in the room caught a glimpse of the struggle she put up against Alessandro. Besides the stab wounds, there were bruises all over her arms and legs, a testament to the force with which she fought him away to defend her honor.
Alessandro at first blamed Maria for the whole thing, claiming he was defending himself from her attacks. No one believed him. He was sent on July 8th to Regina Coeli prison in Rome to await his trial. He made a signed statement that detailed his plan leading up to the attack and the day of the murder. He showed no remorse, saying that if Maria had only done what he said, he would not have hurt her. The court had him psychologically examined for this trial, since insanity could be an inherited trait from his deceased mother. The doctor determined him to be mentally sane and of above average intelligence. He admitted that is was boredom and the drudgery of life that motivated him in his actions. He was sentenced on October 15, 1902, the day before Maria’s birthday, to 30 years in prison. At that time in Italy, he was still legally a minor at 20 years old. Had he been 21, he would have been given life in prison. The death penalty had been abolished by the Italian government in 1889. Thirty years was the maximum sentence for his circumstances.
Alessandro spent the first few years of his sentence in solitary confinement by order of the court. The starkness and isolation of his environment mirrored that of his soul. He labored at monotonous tasks like ropemaking. After a few months he was transferred to Noto, Sicily in February, 1903. It was there in 1908 that he had a mystical experience that utterly changed him. He dreamed he was in a garden where he saw Maria picking flowers. She started to come over to him. She was not afraid of him, but now he was terrified of her. Fortunately for him, there was no escape. When she came near, she began handing him white lilies one at a time, 14 in all, one for each stab wound he had given her. Each one burst into a little flame in his hands. He could feel her love and forgiveness, and through this the mercy of God. He awoke a change man. He called for a priest to confess his sins, taking responsibility for his crime. In 1910 he received a visit from the bishop, who was seeking more information about Maria for the growing popular cult of devotion to her. Alessandro share about his dream and conversion with the bishop and went so far as to write a letter to him dated November 10, 1910 detailing his Maria’s innocence and perseverance in purity, his confession of guilt and conversion. He persevered in this conversion through many trials in prison, including the death of his father in 1918. He was released in 1929, the year of the great stock market crash and the beginning of the worldwide depression. It was also the same year that Maria Goretti’s body was exhumed for veneration as part of the canonization process. The Serenellis and Gorettis were always accompanied by two things: trial and grace.
Alessandro was received by his older brother Pietro to live with him and his wife in Torrette. Employment was difficult and unstable for him on account of his reputation as “the Monster”, but a priest, Father Bernacchio, who knew of his transformation helped him. He knew Alessandro wanted to reconcile with Assunta, and where she could be found. She had moved back to Corinaldo not long after Maria’s murder to be close to her family. At some point she had to put at least her two younger daughters, Ersilia and Teresa, in an orphanage, most likely because she could not adequately care for them. Pope St. Pius X personally requested the Franciscan Missionary Sisters to take Teresa into their orphanage. When she came of age, she joined the order. Assunta worked in the parish rectory. The priest helping Alessandro arranged for him to go meet Assunta on Christmas Eve of 1934. Standing at the door, he asked Assunta if she forgave him. Her response rings in echo of her daughter, showing the kind of faith that Maria had received from her beloved mama, “Alessandro, Maria has forgiven you. God has forgiven you. How can I not forgive you.” They went to the parlor and caught up on the last 32 years of life and cried together. They attended Mass that night together and received Holy Communion kneeling together. From then on, he was always welcome in the Goretti house as though he was one of her own sons.
Fr. Bernacchio knew Alessandro would continue to struggle to find acceptance and stable employment. He interceded with the Capuchin friars at the Marian shrine in Amandola to allow him to reside in their monastery and serve as the doorkeeper and gardener. Not long after he was received there, he was falsely accused of theft by another gardener and jailed for a few weeks. After the man confessed that he had falsely accused Alessandro, they released him from jail, but the prior of the community felt it was too much to have Alessandro live with them. Fr. Bernacchio stepped in again, this time with the Capuchins at Ascoli Piceno.
At Ascoli Piceno, Alessandro’s life finally began to settle into stability and peace. Early on, visitors would come to catch a glimpse of “the monster”, not realizing that the door keeper they were speaking with was the one they were looking for. These visits faded over time, but his reputation as a holy man began to grow. Instead of inquisitive visitors, he started receiving prayer requests. He was called upon several times to give his testimony in Maria’s cause for canonization, which he did willingly to assure everyone that Maria remained pure and never entertained his proposals. Once he traveled back to visit the house in Le Ferriere di Conca, breaking down and weeping while remembering the scenes of the dark day July 5, 1902. It was rumored that Alessandro was present for Maria’s beatification and canonization alongside Assunta, but this is not true.
At the end of his life, Alessandro was transferred to the monastery for the aged and infirm friars in Macerata. He lived out the rest of his years there from 1956-1970. In February 1970, nearly 88 years old, he fell on the way to chapel for prayer and broke his femur. They could not operate on it. He bore the pain of his last days much the way Maria did her own agony, with heroic patience and humility. This was noted in the press, which the prior of the monastery allowed to come interview Alessandro in these final days. Alessandro had ended Maria’s life when he could not win her with his evil plan or his threats, but Maria had accompanied Alessandro his whole life, and she won him for heaven. Alessandro knew, though, that we must co-operate with the grace of God, saying that “one has to deserve paradise.” He died on May 6, 1970 in the bosom of the Church, exactly 70 years after the death of Luigi Goretti. We can see that it was not Maria only, but the whole Goretti family that accompanied him to the gates of heaven. His and St. Maria’s story is the story of God’s redemptive love told through his faithful servants.
Alessandro was buried with the friars at Macerata until the bishop of that diocese and the bishop of Senigalia agreed in 2010 to move his body to the church in Corinaldo dedicated to St. Maria Goretti. His remains are buried behind a wall in the church directly across from Assunta Goretti. Maria’s body rests at the Shrine of St. Maria Goretti and Basilica of Our Lady of Grace in Nettuno.
“Maria’s forgiveness saved me.” Alessandro Serenelli
Our Lady of Fatima
Not long after the events of Maria’s martyrdom took place, another profound event happened when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, proclaiming a message of peace through repentance, self-sacrifice, and prayer. Just like St. Maria, these children were dauntless in the face of persecution, and because of their faithfulness to the Mother of God, the message of Fatima has touched the world and speaks to the need in our ministry to the incarcerated to make reparation for sins and pray fervently for the conversion of sinners.
Follow this link for the full story.
St. Joseph
St. Joseph is the patron of the universal Church and the head of the holy family. Most of our incarcerated brethren have a deep wound of fatherlessness in their hearts, and St. Joseph serves an important role in the life of a Serenelli to give an example of Christian fatherhood and to assist these
St. Benedict
The father of western monasticism, St. Benedict is a father and spiritual guide to all who seek to live a life fully dedicated to following Jesus Christ and contemplating God in the pursuit of Christian perfection. His rule and his life set the model for our residential community life.