We are thrilled to offer you the first good restored photo of St. Maria Goretti! You can find it here: https://shorturl.at/vKd12
We think it’s the first good one in the world, that we’ve seen, and we’ve looked and looked for years. Maria is one of the major Saints of the 20th Century, a beautiful, faithful girl who lost her life. On her deathbed, she forgave the man who took that life. It’s a sad, tragic story that yet has a glorious ending.
While serving 27 years in prison for his crime, her killer had a vision one night of Maria. She told him she had forgiven him for what he had done. He was converted on the spot. After he got out of jail, he begged forgiveness from Maria’s mother, which she gave, and eventually he became a lay brother in a Capuchin monastery. He attended Maria’s canonization in 1950, 48 years since he had killed her. Maria was 11 when she died. She is a patron Saint of Forgiveness, chastity, temptations to impurity, victims of rape, teenagers, and modern youth. Feast Day July 6.
It took us years to finish this restoration, as it went in fits and starts. When you’re restoring blurry old photos, there is a certain “gray area” within which you can draw the line. We believe we have come very, very close. Hopefully close enough so that anyone who had known Maria personally could look at this photo and say, yes, that’s a photo of Maria. We think at worst, they would look it for a while and say, that looks an awful lot like Maria. As with all of our Saint restoration photographs, we hope this photo helps you have a more personal relationship with Maria, and thus a closer relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.