No Greater Love

The Story of Saint Maria Goretti

"I forgive him. I want him to be with me in Paradise."

These were the last words of an eleven-year-old girl dying from fourteen stab wounds—spoken not in hatred, but in love for the man who murdered her.

From the hills of Corinaldo to the marshes of Le Ferriere, from a prison cell to the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, this is the story of Saint Maria Goretti—virgin, martyr, and witness to the transforming power of grace.

Italy, 1902. Maria Goretti is a peasant girl who carries water, minds her siblings, and prays the rosary with wooden beads worn smooth by her mother's hands. She is eleven years old. She knows the names of things. She knows right from wrong. She knows that some things are worth dying for.

Alessandro Serenelli is twenty years old, consumed by desire, blind to conscience. For two years he watches her. For two years she says no. On a July afternoon, when she refuses him one final time, he picks up an awl.

What happens next will echo through a century.

This is not just a story of martyrdom. This is a story of what comes after.

The murderer in his cell, haunted by the face of the child he killed.

The mother who must choose between hate and the impossible forgiveness her daughter begged her to give.

The dream that changes everything—a garden, white lilies, and a girl who refused to stop praying for the soul of the man who destroyed her body but could not touch her soul.

The moment, forty-eight years later, when a mother and a murderer walk hand-in-hand through the streets of Rome, and the world witnesses what grace looks like when it is made flesh.

"White Lilies" is literary historical fiction that reads like prayer.

Told in two movements—first in Maria's own voice, then through the witnesses who carried her story forward—this is a novel about purity and predation, innocence and evil, the weight of conscience and the mathematics of mercy.

It is about a father teaching his daughter that a clean soul is worth more than a long life.

It is about a saint who forgave the unforgivable.

It is about a sinner who discovered that no sin is greater than God's mercy.

Perfect for readers who loved:

• Silence by Shūsaku Endō
• The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
• Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
• The lives of the saints told with literary beauty and unflinching honesty

Based on the true story of Saint Maria Goretti (1890-1902)

Canonized in 1950 before the largest crowd ever assembled for a canonization. Her mother and her murderer both present, both witnesses to the miracle of forgiveness.

Patron saint of youth, purity, victims of violence, and the courage to say no.

"A clean soul is worth more than a long life."
— Luigi Goretti to his daughter Maria, 1899

Content Note: This novel deals honestly with the attempted assault and murder of a child, handled with reverence and without graphic detail. Appropriate for adult readers seeking serious Catholic literature that honors the truth of Maria's suffering and the power of her witness.