Alessandro Serenelli, Murderer of St. Maria Goretti

Alessandro Serenelli was the perpetrator of one of the most infamous crimes in the annals of Italian history. In 1902, at the age of 20, he stabbed 11-year-old Maria Goretti to death after she resisted his sexual overtures. Shortly into his prison sentence, Maria appeared to him in a dream, and his conversion began. When Alessandro died 68 years later in a Capuchin friary, some believed he was a saint. Others were unsure. Yet, everyone agreed that Alessandro Serenelli had traveled the long and difficult road of Christian redemption.

In this book, the life of Alessandro Serenelli is reconstructed in excruciating detail. Serenelli grew up in the Marches region of central Italy among poverty, instability, and precariousness. His father was an alcoholic, and his mother was admitted to an insane asylum after she attempted to drown Alessandro in a well when he was an infant. During his formative years, Alessandro was passed around among relatives. While still an adolescent, he took a job working at sea, surrounded by unsavory sailors and fishermen. When he was sixteen, he immigrated to the Roman countryside to work with his father as a sharecropper. There, the two were introduced to Luigi Goretti, and a working partnership began. It meant living under the same roof with Luigi, his wife, and children, including young Maria. Not long after Luigi died of malaria, Alessandro entered a downward spiral.

After the murder, Serenelli was convicted of abuse of domestic relations, attempted rape, and premeditated murder. He was sentenced to thirty years in a penal colony. If he had been twenty-one, he would have received life imprisonment with no chance of parole. During the first three years in solitary confinement, he remained defiant. Then, Maria appeared to him in a dream. She came with lilies, which she placed in his arms. He realized she had forgiven him, and he could be saved.

When released after 27 years, Alessandro went to live with a brother, working odd jobs as a laborer. These years were difficult. He had changed, but he was constantly outed as the murderer of Maria Goretti-the "St. Agnes martyr" who died in defense of her chastity. He was shunned and frequently fired from his jobs. As the years wore on, Alessandro desired to enter a religious setting. This choice was made due to the humiliations and misunderstandings he encountered in attempting to reintegrate into the world. He was once accused of a crime just because his name was Alessandro Serenelli. Yet he accepted every hardship as penance in atonement for his sin. Moreover, he also developed a love for silence and solitude, and he wished to live quietly in an oasis of spirituality. Therefore, he went to live with the Capuchins. Though Alessandro never took vows, he lived the same life as the friars. The friars frequently said that he lived as "a true son of St. Francis."

On May 6, 1970, at the age of 88, Alessandro Serenelli died peacefully in the Capuchin infirmary in Macerata. It was the same day and month in which Luigi Goretti died seventy years earlier. Those who knew Alessandro said that he died in the peace of Christ. Some said he should be declared a saint. Others said he better exemplified the life of a penitent and showed what the road to redemption looks like. Certainly, Alessandro Serenelli was a complex man with an ambiguous character. The young man who murdered a saintly girl in a fit of rage for not giving into his lustful cravings was the same elderly man who died in grace after having spent more than three decades in a Franciscan friary. He shows us, at the same time, the tragedy of the horror of sin and the fullness of the mercy of God.

For all who have sinned or been the victim of senseless violence, his life story is a sure sign of hope and the redemptive power of the cross.