Assunta Carlini broke her leg while running for shelter from the air raids and was forced to use a wheelchair. It was in this wheelchair that she had the honor of being received by His Holiness the Pope at the Vatican on the day her daughter was canonized. She is the only mother to have had the joy of witnessing her own daughter’s canonization.

Luis Goretti and Assunta Carlini were humble farmers who had five children. Their second child, Maria, was born in Corinaldo on October 16, 1890. They soon had to migrate in search of better land and settled near Nettuno as tenant farmers for Count Mazzoleni. The land was fertile but very swampy and unhealthy. Luis Goretti died shortly afterward, a victim of malaria, leaving Assunta alone with her five children, the eldest of whom was barely thirteen. Maria helped her mother with the housework and educated her younger siblings, teaching them to read and say their first prayers.

Assunta, in addition to her family, had to care for two other people who lived in the same house and who were also day laborers on the farm; their names were Juan Serenelli and his son Alejandro, a strong young man of about twenty. Alejandro wasn’t a bad boy, but he began to read indecent books and set his malicious eyes on Maria.

On two occasions he made advances towards Maria, but the little girl did not understand what Alejandro wanted, although she felt that it was not good.

On July 5, 1902, while the whole family was out threshing in the threshing floor, Maria Goretti was sewing in the kitchen, and Alexander called her:

-Maria, come here.

-So that?

“You come here,” Alejandro insisted.

Maria disobeyed. Alejandro grabbed her violently, covered her mouth with his strong hand, and kicked the door shut.

Maria shouted:

-No! No, please! It’s a sin! No! You’ll be damned.

Alexander was unable to achieve his goal and, in a fit of pique, took a sharp iron and stabbed it fourteen times in succession into Maria’s belly and chest.

Five hours later, accompanied by her mother, to whom she recounted everything that had happened, Maria was taken by ambulance to the hospital; before receiving Viaticum, she forgave Alejandro and a few hours later died invoking the Blessed Virgin.

Alejandro confessed his crime, was sentenced to thirty years in prison and, upon leaving prison, before entering a convent as a lay brother, received forgiveness from Lady Assunta and together with her attended the canonization of Maria in the Vatican.