Sexual assault on 12-year-old girl

An 18-year-old man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the vicious murder and attempted rape of a 12-year-old girl. Authorities say that she had been stabbed 14 times and died in the local hospital two days after the attack.

Reports indicate that before she died, the young girl had identified her attacker and asked for God’s forgiveness upon him.

Following his release from prison, the child-killer would be back in a cell again – in a Capuchin monastery. He would die in a monastery, humbly and repentantly toiling for decades as a gardener, but would still be alive when his victim, Maria Goretti, was canonized as a saint in 1950.

Maria’s mother, then 82 years old, was present for the great event: the first woman to be present at the canonization of her daughter. She would die in 1954.

Today is the 104th anniversary of St. Maria Goretti’s death.