Maria Goretti (2003)

Pontine Marshes, July 5, 1902. Law enforcement officers rush into an area where the crowd is extremely agitated and arrest Alessandro Serenelli, a twenty-year-old. Many locals attack the young man, but the carabinieri save him from being lynched and take him to prison. Meanwhile, Maria Goretti, a twelve-year-old girl wounded by several knife blows, is rushed to the hospital; her mother, Assunta, and a doctor stay by her side, and the doctor later operates on her. After the operation, the doctor tells Assunta that Maria is in extremely serious condition and still in danger of dying. The Catholic priest Father Basilio, a Passionist friar, arrives at the hospital and, entering Maria’s room, begins to pray for her. At this point, the story resumes in chronological order. Two families, the Gorettis and the Serenellis, live in a farmhouse in the Pontine Marshes known as “Cascina antica”: the first consists of the parents, Luigi and Assunta, their second-born daughter Maria, and their other little children, while the second consists of the father, Giovanni, and his son Alessandro. Both families are poor and illiterate, and their members work as farmhands on the lands of a wealthy landowner. They are always at risk of contracting deadly diseases such as malaria. Maria has been raised by her family to cultivate and nurture her Catholic faith, and she herself is a devout Catholic. Everyone who knows her is astonished that, despite her miserable economic circumstances, a child can be so cheerful, spirited, hopeful, and always ready to help everyone. Maria is now waiting to receive her First Communion. Alessandro, on the other hand, is an adolescent whose upbringing is shaped by his father Giovanni’s behavior: he is an alcoholic, hateful, indifferent to religion, and ungrateful to his friend Luigi, Maria’s father, who has always helped him in times of difficulty. Alessandro is often treated harshly and inappropriately by his father, but what consoles him is the deep friendship that binds him to Maria, despite their age difference. Father Basilio has quickly realized that Maria Goretti is an exceptional person, but he does not know that the girl’s life will be cut short prematurely.