VATICAN CITY — To mark the centennial of St. Maria Goretti's death, Pope John Paul II issued a letter dated July 6 that proposed the young saint as a model of chastity and forgiveness, two themes that will be addressed at this month's World Youth Day in Toronto.

Echoing his message for World Youth Day 2002, in which he calls on youth to be the “sentinels of the morning who announce the rising of the sun, who is the risen Christ,” the Holy Father wrote that the life of St. Maria Goretti shows young people that they are “not alone … in walking in the footsteps of the divine Master.”

“St. Maria Goretti and many adolescents, who in the course of the centuries have paid with their martyrdom for their loyalty to the Gospel, are beside [today's youth], to fill their souls with the strength of remaining constant and faithful. In this way, they can be sentinels of a radiant dawn, illuminated by hope,” John Paul wrote.

The letter was addressed to Bishop Agostino Vallini of Albano, near Rome, in whose diocese rests the shrine of St. Maria Goretti in Nettuno. A modern basilica has been built over the tomb of the young saint.

The 12–year-old Maria was fatally stabbed in 1902 when she refused the sexual advances of Alessandro Serenelli, a young man who lived next door. She died on July 6 — now her feast day — and was canonized in 1950. The crowds were so immense for the ceremony that for the first time it was held in St. Peter's Square rather than inside the basilica.

“It is justly observed that the martyrdom of St. Maria Goretti opened what would be called the century of martyrs,” wrote the Holy Father of the 20th century.

He also noted that her martyrdom was for the cause of chastity.

“In a culture which values above all the physical relationships between man and woman, the Church continues to defend and promote the value o f sexuality as a factor which involves every aspect of the person and that must therefore be lived in an interior attitude of freedom and reciprocal respect, in the light of the original design of God. In such a perspective, the person discovers himself as the recipient of a gift and is called to make himself a gift for the other,” the Pope wrote.

While St. Maria Goretti is known as a “martyr of chastity,” the papal letter also highlighted another important aspect of her story: forgiveness. While in the hospital the parish priest brought her Viaticum and asked her whether she forgave her attacker, Alessandro.

“Yes, I forgive him and want him to be in paradise with me some day,” the dying Maria said.

Alessandro would not die for another 68 years. Unrepentant of his crime, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. In 1910, his eighth year in prison, Maria appeared to him in a dream and offered him a bouquet of flowers. Alessandro had a conversion, repented of his crime and went to confession.

A model prisoner afterwards, he was released early in 1928 and went immediately to Mrs. Goretti to ask her pardon. Mother and assassin received Communion together at the Christmas Mass that year. Alessandro subsequently lived at a Franciscan friary, tending to the garden and living as a Franciscan tertiary. He was present at the canonization in 1950.

“Forgiveness, in the thought of the Church, does not mean moral relativism or permissiveness,” the Holy Father wrote. “On the contrary, it requires a full recognition of one's own fault and the assumption of one's own responsibility as a condition for finding true peace again.”

“The mother of the saint, for her part, offered [Alessandro] without reticence the forgiveness of the family in the courtroom where the trial was held,” the letter noted. “We do not know whether it was the mother who taught forgiveness to the daughter, or whether it was the forgiveness offered by the martyr on her deathbed which determined the behavior of the mother. Nevertheless, it is certain that the spirit of forgiveness animated the relationships of all the Goretti family.”

The relationship between peace, justice and forgiveness was the subject of the Holy Father's World Day of Peace message for 2002. According to officials at the Pontifical Council for the Laity, which organizes World Youth Day, the themes of that letter are expected to be the focus in Toronto.