Blessed Pierina Morosini

Blessed Pierina Morosini was a young Italian factory worker from the countryside near Bergamo. She remained a laywoman, yet she gave herself to God by a private vow. At the age of twenty-six she was fatally wounded while defending herself against an attacker on her way home from the mill. The Church venerates her as a virgin and martyr and commemorates her on April 6, the day of her death.

She was born on January 7, 1931, in Fiobbio, a village in the municipality of Albino, the eldest of nine children. The family was poor and deeply devout; it was above all their mother who taught the children the faith. Pierina began early to help her at home, and to her younger brothers and sisters she was like a second mother.

In March 1946, at the age of fifteen, she started work at the Honegger cotton mill in Albino, where in time she took her place at the looms. She worked in shifts and walked several kilometers every day, and she began her day early in the morning with Holy Mass and Communion. Her fellow workers remembered her diligence, her kindness, and her reserve. On her way to work and back she greeted people in the local dialect: “Stì bé!” which means “Keep well!”

She longed to enter a religious congregation and become a missionary. When she understood that her family could not manage without her wages, she set that desire aside and never complained about it. She discovered, as John Paul II later said, that she “could become a saint even without entering a convent.” At the age of sixteen she made a private vow of chastity, and later also of poverty and obedience. From 1942 she belonged to Catholic Action; in her parish she led the youngest girls and taught catechism. She was also a Franciscan tertiary.

In 1947 she went on pilgrimage to Rome for the beatification of Maria Goretti, who from then on was her model. She told those close to her that she would rather let herself be killed than commit a sin.

On April 4, 1957, she received Holy Communion in the morning, as she did every day, and went to work. In the early afternoon, as she was walking home, a young man accosted her in the woods. She rejected his advances and tried to appeal to his conscience. When he attacked her, she defended herself with all her strength, until he struck her several times on the back of the head with a stone. Her brother found her unconscious on the path. The parish priest gave her the Anointing of the Sick, and she was then taken to the hospital in Bergamo. She died there on April 6 without regaining consciousness.

People spoke of martyrdom at once and compared Pierina to Maria Goretti. In 1980 the bishop of Bergamo, Giulio Oggioni, opened the process for her beatification. John Paul II confirmed her martyrdom by a decree of July 3, 1987, and on October 4 he beatified her in St. Peter’s Basilica together with Antonia Mesina and Marcel Callo, during the Synod of Bishops devoted to the laity. He said on that occasion: “All three are lay people, they are young, they are martyrs.” The relics of the blessed rest in the parish church of Fiobbio.