Near Anzio, in 1902, an eleven-year-old girl named Maria Goretti resisted a rapist and was stabbed to death with a pointed crowbar. Last fortnight, as the Roman Catholic Church prepared to canonize the dead girl for her martyrdom in defending her "Christian purity," Britain's Catholic Herald (circ. 90,000) ran an "exclusive, extraordinary" Page One picture of THE MAN WHO KILLED BLESSED MARIA.
The copies had hardly been distributed to agents when frantic wires went out as far as Eire: "Suppress current issue . . . Call in all copies distributed. Absolutely vital." The Herald had made a whopping mistake. The man in...
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