Blessed Pierina Morosini

Ed note: This one concerns rape.

Pierina Morosini was the child of a farmer, born in a village outside Bergamo in 1931. The first time she left the province was to attend the beatification of Maria Goretti, who’d been stabbed to death at age 11 by an attempted rapist. At 26, Pierina would meet a similar fate.

One afternoon in 1957, while she was walking home from work as a seamstress, a man tried to force himself on her, and, when she resisted, smashed her head with a rock. Pierina’s brother found her unconscious in a pool of blood, still clutching her rosary. The official reason for her beatification (the ceremony is pictured above) is the same as Maria’s, “in defensum castitatis”: in defense of chastity.

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