Defending St. Maria Goretti’s title “martyr of purity”

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jul 06, 2026

On multiple past feasts of St. Maria Goretti, I can recall reading articles, blogs, and social media posts expressing discomfort with or outright rejection of St. Maria’s title of “martyr of purity,” given to her by Pope Pius XII in his homily at her canonization in 1950. The objection is that because St. Maria died resisting a violent rape attempt, to call her a “martyr of purity” implies that she would have been guilty of unchastity simply for being physically coerced, had she not resisted to the death. These critics do not reject St. Maria’s sainthood, but usually propose that she be considered heroic instead for her forgiveness of her murderer, or because she was motivated to keep him from committing a sin.

This objection always seemed somewhat wrong-headed to me, simply because the Church has always venerated her for protecting her own purity. Yet it is understandable that someone, especially a rape victim, might feel that praising St. Maria for resisting rape implies that rape survivors are somehow guilty of unchastity. At one time I might have responded simply by saying that the saints are saints not simply because they avoided sin, but because they went above and beyond strict moral obligation, often in ways that not everyone would be called to do. So if St. Maria valued her virginity so greatly that she preferred to die rather than lose it, this is no negative reflection on those who had their virginity taken from them by physical force.

But there is a better defense of St. Maria’s title, because it turns out that her heroic chastity cannot be reduced to resisting a rape attempt. If more people were familiar with the whole story, I suspect there would be fewer objections to calling her a martyr of purity. (And in fairness, the simplified version of the story has frequently been repeated by those praising St. Maria’s martyrdom.)

It was a 2021 Twitter thread by Samuel Howard which acquainted me with the fuller context of Goretti’s murder. Citing a biography of the saint, Howard wrote:

The confusion, I think comes from focusing on the day of the murder. Alessandro had made several previous non-violent advances, which Maria had virtuously rejected. *Then* he threatened to kill her if she reported him. Then finally, he resolved to kill her not for reporting him, but if she again rejected his advances. If the story is relayed as someone who dies rather than be forcibly raped, yes, that makes little sense. But she was murdered because of a series of events which began with her virtuously rejecting indecent suggestions made *without* a threat of violence. So she is martyred because of her purity without it being the case that it’s her resistance at the immediate point of violent assault that is key to this martyrdom.

Some people might still object that to celebrate her for refusing propositions implies that children can consent to sex. To which I respond:

First, as Samuel Howard noted elsewhere, the age of consent to marriage in Italy at the time was 12 (Maria was 11). This is simply a bit of historical context shedding light on how Maria’s story was interpreted at the time. She was seen as capable of consent and thus virtuous for refusing it.

Second, what really matters is that St. Maria Goretti was above the age of reason and that she understood she was being invited to do something sinful, because she said as much. St. Maria had already, at a young age, made a promise of purity to God. To deny her the capability to do this is essentially to deny a genuine spiritual life to children above the age of reason. And this is the most important point: to deny St. Maria the palm of martyrdom for refusing sexual sin is to deny all child martyrs, not only the virgin martyrs. For when it comes to martyrdom, there is no reason to distinguish between an invitation to fornication and an invitation to idolatry.

But physical coercion is different, because then one is not making a choice at all, and one is not obligated to die rather than be physically assaulted. That is why it is understandable to be uncomfortable with the oversimplified version of Maria’s story.

I want to comment further on how some objections to St. Maria Goretti’s title have broader implications for moral responsibility and the call to heroic virtue.

Many people today, sensitive to sexual power dynamics, want to say that even in a non-violent proposition from, say, a boss and an employee, free consent is impossible because there is the implicit threat of professional penalties. But while we can recognize the predatory nature of such a proposition (actually all extramarital propositions are predatory!), the fact is that free will exists. The woman who chooses to sin rather than suffer a career penalty is responsible for her act, even if it was unfair for her ever to be faced with that choice. It is not fundamentally different in terms of moral responsibility than if she had been offered an opportunity to commit usury to get ahead.

There is no reason to say that the threat “have sex with me or I will kill you” (which is not what happened with Maria anyway) makes heroic resistance or sinful consent impossible, any more than “worship a false god or I will kill you” makes a free-will response impossible. In the early persecutions, the Church treated those who sacrificed to idols under threat of death as having sinned and excommunicated themselves. Various forms of psychological pressure might mitigate responsibility, but no more in the sixth commandment than in the first. Ultimately, to categorically eliminate culpability for those being threatened with negative consequences unless they sin would degrade the whole Catholic tradition of martyrdom.

The martyrs are witnesses not only to the Cross of Christ, but to each man or woman’s responsibility for how we respond to even the most unfair and oppressive circumstances. A child martyr is an especially potent witness and challenge to adults who want to make excuses for ourselves.

The child saints should also inform the way that we guide the children in our lives, for they too are called to pick up their cross. St. Maria was not only praised by the Church after the fact, but within her own lifetime the Church told her to be heroic and to suffer well. I was struck by the account of how in her last hours, St. Maria Goretti benefited from the guidance of priests encouraging her to offer up her sufferings and forgive her murderer.

[In the ambulance,] 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.

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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?”

How many people today would dare suggest to a dying murder victim, let alone a child, that she offer up her suffering? We need priests who are more keen on supernatural exhortation than human consolation.

On a final note, my favorite work of contemporary religious art (painted by a non-Catholic, interestingly) is Noah Buchanan’s depiction of St. Maria, after her death, giving lilies (one for each time she was stabbed) as a sign of forgiveness to her murderer, Alessandro Serenelli. It was commissioned by Cardinal Burke and can be seen at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin.