Following in the footsteps of Saint Maria Goretti

John Paul II said that children «are the smile of heaven entrusted to the earth», and Saint Maria Goretti was a child in whom everything spoke of heaven.
Even before forgiving her murderer, Marietta was capable of sowing, in her short life of just 12 years, many pearls of the pure Gospel lived out in simplicity and humility.
She nurtures hope and trust in providence even in suffering: when her father dies, she is the one who encourages her mother with luminous words: «Mum, don't worry, God will not abandon us». She never tires of offering her help and attention to others, to her mother and her little siblings: «Now I will take care of running the household», she says to her mother once again.
In the simplicity of her life, she shows a very special devotion to prayer and the spiritual life: «Mum, when will I be able to make my First Communion?», she asks, and then again, just one day before being brutally attacked by Alessandro Serenelli: «Teresa, when will we go to receive Jesus again?».

To crown this holiness, which already shines, comes the ready forgiveness she was able to give, on her deathbed, to Alessandro: «For the love of Jesus, I forgive him wholeheartedly». And again: «I want him with me in Paradise».
And it is here that this child, a saint in her everyday life, becomes a giant of holiness and teaches us something eternal: the greatness and beauty of forgiveness; it is the balm of every life and is capable of opening Paradise wide to those who give it and those who receive it.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta used to say: «We know that, if we truly want to love, we must learn to forgive».

By getting to know Marietta, we gradually learn to love; by getting to know Marietta, we realize that, step by step, something in our hearts begins to melt… with her, we are led to think that we too can - in our everyday lives, weighed down by resentments and enmities - write a luminous page for ourselves and for others, a page bearing the words: «I forgive him wholeheartedly», and feel Paradise being born in our hearts, even now.

We therefore wish you to read, page after page, about Marietta’s journey, and then discover the beauty of imitating her with simplicity in your own life.