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By Erin McCole Cupp

A Relationship Poisoned

Their story could have been so different. They could have been childhood sweethearts, even though Alessandro was eight years her senior. In the Italian countryside of the early 20^th century, it wouldn’t have been unheard of for them to wait until she was of marriageable age before embarking on family life together. Even as a teenager, he could have chosen to approach her with honor, service, protection, provision. Instead, Alessandro chose impulse over self-control, brutality over compassion. Instead of watching the girl grow to womanhood and making himself her loving husband, he made himself her murderer.

The girl’s name was Maria Goretti. Alessandro destroyed what could have been. And yet that was not enough to destroy her. Nor, in the end, was it enough to destroy him. Their story could have been so different. It still became a story of hope.

Poverty and Hardship

When Alessandro was quite small, his mother intentionally dropped him down a well. He survived. Soon afterwards she was sent to a mental institution, where she later died. The Serenelli family was poor, and motherless Alessandro began a life of heavy labor at a very young age. He did not resist the rough influence of his coworkers. In fact, he readily adopted their foul language. Whenever he could, he sought solitude, choosing lewd magazines and images for his only company. We may be tempted to hear of Alessandro’s childhood and write him off as a lost cause. Perhaps he had written himself off.

It was abject poverty that brought the Goretti and Serenelli families together. Maria herself was no stranger to hardship and loss. The fathers of the families joined forces to find work and eventually shared housing. Before long, Maria lost her father to malaria, which Alessandro’s father soon contracted as well.

We can only guess what Alessandro thought of the pious Goretti family, gathering nightly for the Rosary while he was longing to get back to his room and the images he hoarded there. We do know that Alessandro found himself especially drawn to pretty Maria, who prayed an extra Rosary each night for the soul of her father. He who resented his life of hard work, watched Maria take on extra chores so that a literate neighbor could prepare her to receive First Eucharist.  They both kept pictures of women in their rooms: he of pornography, she of the Blessed Mother.

Alessandro could have reached out to her in empathy towards their shared hardship and grief. Instead he harbored lust and rage.

Entitlement or Sacrifice

Theirs became a classic story of a predator testing and then isolating his victim. Maria was only eleven years old. Alessandro, twenty, went after someone far weaker than he; someone he imagined could not resist him. First Alessandro tested Maria’s boundaries with sexual jokes. Maria was so sensitive to the Truth that verbal vulgarity alone was enough for her to run away from Alessandro, sobbing. To her retreating back, Alessandro intimidated her into keeping his behavior secret by threatening her life if she told.

Maria did all she could to avoid Alessandro. She begged her mother not to leave her alone. However, as Maria’s job was to care for the house and little children while the rest were doing the summer farm work, Alessandro knew he could count on Maria being left undefended at some point. He planned to find her alone, overpower her, and if he could not rape her, he would murder her.

He hid an awl in the house for his weapon. Then, while everyone else was busy with the fava bean harvest, Alessandro cornered Maria. She fought him, body and soul, telling him that if he did what he intended, he would go to hell. Alessandro did not care. Defeated in his lust, he stabbed Maria repeatedly with the awl then locked himself in his bedroom so he would not have to watch her die.

Shame and Light

In the twenty-four hours between the stabbing and her death, Maria suffered not just the physical pain of her wounds but also flashbacks to the event itself. She cried out against Alessandro, once again warning him against hell and his sin. Alessandro, however, was not there to hear. He had been arrested. He denied his culpability in Maria’s death, claiming he’d been defending himself against her advances.

The jury was not convinced. He was tried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to 30 years imprisonment and hard labor. True to character, he behaved so dangerously towards his jailers and fellow prisoners that he spent much his sentence in solitary confinement. One-third of the way through this sentence, however, Alessandro had a dream.

He dreamed he was in a garden with Maria. For each stab Alessandro had given her in life, Maria in the dream handed her murderer one lily — fourteen in all. In his hands, the blossom of each flower turned to white flame. When the dream was over, he woke a changed man. He no longer resisted his jailers and those sent to help him. He was so transformed that his good behavior garnered him release from prison three years ahead of schedule.

What Could Have Been and What Could Be

Shortly after his release, Alessandro visited Maria’s mother and, on his knees, begged her forgiveness. Soon he approached a convent of Capuchin brothers, and they took him in, first as a laborer and eventually as a lay brother. Before he died, he wrote a letter to the world in which he admitted that, in his youth, he’d allowed himself down “a false road — an evil path.” He acknowledged that Maria had been sent by God to rescue him from that path. He wrote, “Her words both of rebuke and forgiveness are still imprinted in my heart.”

Their story could have been so different. Instead of both boy and girl turning together toward God, Alessandro turned to resentment, while Maria turned towards gratitude. Alessandro craved sin, and Maria fought his craving. In her fight, she won his soul for God.

The relationship between St. Maria Goretti and Alessandro Serenelli shines the light of hope into not just the addict’s shame but also onto the value of the wounds carried by the betrayed. Maria did not just stand fast for truth against Alessandro’s lust; she fought not for her own sake but for his. Because she chose God, God chose her to rescue Alessandro from himself — and by his conversion perhaps to release other men from their own mental and spiritual prisons. Yes, if Alessandro had written a better story sooner, true love could have been made manifest in the self-giving love of husband and wife. What could have been, however, did not destroy what Alessandro was able to become: selfless, gentle, humble, and loving, a beloved child of God.

If you are reading this, perhaps you regret losing what could have been. Let the courage of St. Maria Goretti and the redemption of Alessandro Serenelli shine light for you onto a good path — the path of what could yet be.

Alessandro Serenelli died on May 6, 1970. The Feast of St. Maria Goretti is celebrated on July 6. For more information about St. Maria Goretti and Alessandro, visit Pilgrimage of Mercy.

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Erin McCole Cupp is a wife, mother, and lay Dominican who writes and talks as much as she can about God’s power to heal and redeem even the worst of sinners.