Abbey-Roads2

The story of a martyr. 

Maria Goretti grew up a daughter of poor peasants, who earned their living as field hands.  Maria’s mother had to work in the fields and Maria essentially became the mom to her siblings during the day, taking care of the household chores while her mother worked.  Maria was well known to the neighbors for her joyful and generous personality and pious devotion.  When she was twelve, a rather coarse young man who lived in the same complex, took notice of the young girl.

Allessandro was dissolute and disrespectful, a user of pornography.  He eventually tried to rape Maria, although she resisted, pleading with him not to endanger his soul, warning that his attentions were a mortal sin.  Forcing himself upon her, Maria resisted his advances and he stabbed  her repeatedly with a knife.  Maria died twenty four hours later, having preserved her innocence and forgiven her attacker.  (The murderer later repented in prison, inspired by a vision of the Saint.  He actually was reconciled to her mother after his release from prison.)

Patron of youth.  

Since I grew up in an Italian neighborhood, Maria Goretti was a big deal for me - she and Dominic Savio were held up as models and patrons of youth.  The neighborhood I grew up in was considered by outsiders to be tough.  Before we moved there, all my Anglo friends said it was full of gangs and street toughs.  I couldn’t imagine that, being an Italian neighborhood, I associated it with the best of everything Catholic, saints and devotions, etc..  I wasn’t scared to move there at all, nor was I disappointedwhen we had- my dearest friends and lasting friendships were cultivated there.

At that time, Italians still experienced the remnants of discrimination common to all ethnic groups as they assimilate into American society.  Granted, my friend’s parents and grandparents would have experienced it more intensely, but in the 1960’s people still used the derogatory terms of ‘wap’ and ‘dago’ in reference to Italians.

The neighborhood

The neighborhood was not poor, but rather working class, and the “upper class” were the store and bar owners, along with those who owned rental property.  Of course there were poorer families, divorced women with children, etc.  Everyone knew one another however, and there definitely were some rough families.

For example,  I knew a girl whose mother was shot in the face by her husband.  One of the neighborhood toughs kidnapped his girlfriend because her parents opposed the relationship.  I heard of an occasional rape, and child molestation, etc..  Some families had distant mob connections, and we had our own ’strega’ or witch, who did spells to get rid of the evil eye, and some say, perform abortions.  (No one ever revealed to me who it was however.)

My point is, that aside from our modernity, it could have been Maria Goretti’s neighborhood - like her mother, many of my friend’s mom’s worked.  Maria Goretti and her family would have enjoyed little esteem or respect from the gentry in the region she lived; just as in my neighborhood, outsiders thought our area lower class and rough.  It surely wasn’t a slum, nevertheless, outsiders definitely would have considered some of us “white trash”.

Poor kids today.

Both the hardship of Maria’s life and my own experience helps me to consider the kids who today live in poorer pockets of the city, areas considered slums, or ghettos - and of course, those infamous trailer parks.  All of those poor kids and their families - who, more often than not live in single parent homes.  Today, when we hear of a drive-by shooting, or an innocent girl being shot while doing her homework - in her own house - some of us may have a tendency to dismiss the event as unfortunate, yet typical for that class of people.  Some people have the ability to shake their heads in disgust, and pass it off as something that happened to “those people” in “that” part of town.  This group may not be openly referred to as white trash; although unconsciously they might be regarded as ”low life”, poor immigrants, or simply under-acheivers - more politically correctly - members of the underclass.  Viewing the situation from our respectable, affluent vantage point, not a few of us can dismiss the fact that crimes and misdemeanors are to be expected from “those” people.

I wonder if that wasn’t what the gentry of Maria Goretti’s locality may have first thought when she was murdered.  Certainly her close neighbors knew she was a good girl, but did others know or even care?  At least, right away?  She wasn’t always that sweet picture book saint we see now, gazing up to heaven, carrying a bouquet of lilies around.  To outsiders, she probably would have looked to be a scruffy little urchin, a coarse peasant girl.  No doubt sweet, and perhaps pretty, at times edifying others by her cheerful unselfishness and piety, Maria would not have been anything near the social acceptbility of the upper class girls.  She was just a poor peasant, a farm-hand’s daughter. 

What happened to Maria Goretti happens to the poor kids of today all of the time.  (Affluent kids some of the time.)  Though Maria’s family was poor, she was raised in a devout, religious atmosphere of familial love, wherein morality and virtue was taught, along with a keen sense of responsibility and duty.  Many kids today do not enjoy this benefit, nevertheless they are still kids - good or bad.  Their economic poverty is nothing compared to their spiritual and moral poverty.  Many are raised without any religion at all.  Maria was blessed, most of the kids today are not.

St. Maria Goretti’s role today.

St Maria Goretti’s relevance today is so much more than her heroic martyrdom for purity, as noble and exalted as that is.  It seems clear to me she is an example for every poor kid in our cities; sexualized and exploited by popular culture, victimized by poverty and violence, and maybe worse, marginalized by a remote and uncaring upper class.

What can we do about the poor kids of today however?  We throw money at education, but that doesn’t seem to be working, and all the while poverty expands in our cities and suburbs, and these kids continue to be neglected.  We see them with their pants down around their knees, and the girls look like tramps, both sexes pierced and tatooed, while we look away in disgust and do our best to ignore them.  But they are still just kids - like St. Maria Goretti was.

I don’t have a solution, yet our kids desperately need our prayer, and our love - but never our rejection or contempt.  St. Maria Goretti, pray for us.