Relics of St. Maria Goretti Coming to Plainfield Church

The relics of St. Maria Goretti will be making a stop at St. Mary Immaculate Parish in Plainfield, one of the few churches in Illinois to receive the relics outside of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

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St. Maria Goretti was an 11-year-old Italian girl stabbed to death while resisting a neighbor trying to rape her in 1902. Maria is said to have forgiven her attacker, Alessandro Serenelli, as she lay dying of infection from 14 stab wounds inflicted with a metal file. Serenelli was sentenced to 30 years in prison. According to the official Vatican account, he had been in prison for six years when Maria appeared to him in a vision and handed him white lily flowers she had picked from a garden.

“Her greatest virtue was her unyielding forgiveness of her attacker even in the midst of horrendous physical suffering, a forgiveness that would completely convert him and set him on a path to personal holiness,” the release said.

The gesture of forgiveness is said to have filled Serenelli with the light of the Holy Spirit. He immediately became contrite, and finished the rest of his sentence in tranquility. His behavioral change was so dramatic that he was released three years early. He eventually joined the Capuchin Franciscans as a lay brother.

She was officially canonized by Pope Pius XII on June 24, 1950. Known as a model of mercy, she is the Catholic Church’s youngest saint. Her remains are embedded in a silver box inside a wax likeness and displayed in a glass case.

During the Vatican-sponsored Pilgrimage of Mercy U.S. Tour, the relics were previously displayed at parishes in Philadelphia prior to Pope Francis’ visit. Within the last few weeks, the relics were in New York, at Sing Sing Prison, and in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Michigan. (Visit MariaGoretti.com for the rest of the tour schedule.)

This visit of the major relics of St. Maria Goretti is an effort on the part of the Holy See and Treasures of the Church to prepare and catechize the United States for this celebration in the life of the church.

St. Mary encourages people of all denominations and faiths to attend.

The relics will available for viewing Thursday, Oct. 15. They are expected to arrive between 8 and 9 a.m. The doors of the church will open at 10 a.m. and close at 11 p.m. Public veneration of St. Maria will begin at 10 a.m. A rosary and angelus will take place at noon. Divine mercy chaplet will take place at 3 p.m. A solemn mass celebrated in St. Maria’s honor will begin at 7 p.m. A rosary will take place at 9 p.m. and night prayer will take place at 11 p.m.

St. Mary Immaculate Parish is located at 15629 S. Rt. 59 in Plainfield.