Girl’s sainthood inquiry

Press, 7 February 1985, Page 10

Girl’s sainthood inquiry

NZPA-Reuter Vatican City

The Vatican announced yesterday that it had set up a commission to examine the case of an 11-year-old girl who was made a saint after choosing death rather than submit to a would-be rapist. The announcement said that the move was in response to the recent publication of a book that argues that Saint Maria Goretti did not deserve sainthood. Maria was killed in 1902

in the Pontine marshes area south of Rome and was canonised by Pope Pius XII in 1950. She has been held up in Catholic schools in many countries as a model of Christian purity. The book, by an Italian author, Giordano Bruno Guerri, says that Maria was not a mature Christian, that the miracles attributed to her were of doubtful value, and that it had been failure of nerve that stopped her attacker from raping her.

The announcement by the Vatican’s Sacred Congregation for the Causes of the Saints said that the commission would give an “objective reply” to the book. It gave no indication that Maria’s sainthood would be called in to question, and accused Guerri of displaying ignorance and confusion about the process of canonisation. The nine-man commission will be headed by a senior judge of the Sacra Rota, the Vatican court.