St. Maria Goretti (1890–1902) was an 11-year-old Italian peasant girl of an immigrant farming family at Le Ferriere outside Nettuno on the Mediterranean coast south of Rome. On July 5, 1902, a 19-year-old neighbour named Alessandro Serenelli attempted to rape her; when she resisted, telling him 'No! It is a sin! God does not want it!', he stabbed her fourteen times. She lived through the night and the following day; she explicitly forgave Alessandro on her deathbed: 'For the love of Jesus I forgive him, and I want him to be with me in heaven.' She died on July 6, 1902.
Alessandro served 27 years in prison. He repented after a vision of Maria, became a Capuchin tertiary, and was present at her canonisation. Maria's body was exhumed in 1929 in preparation for her beatification — found substantially preserved, the wounds visible. She was beatified in 1947 and canonised by Pius XII on June 24, 1950 in St. Peter's Square — at a ceremony at which both her mother Assunta and Alessandro Serenelli were present (the first time the killer of a saint was present at her canonisation). Her body is preserved beneath the main altar of the Sanctuary at Nettuno; her face is covered with a wax mask. She is one of the youngest canonised saints of the modern Church.