Pino Puglisi

Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi (, ; 15 September 1937 – 15 September 1993) was a Roman Catholic priest in the rough Palermo neighbourhood of Brancaccio. He openly challenged the Mafia who controlled the neighbourhood, and was killed by them on his 56th birthday. His life story has been retold in a book, ''Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso'' (2013), and portrayed in a film, ''Come Into the Light'' (Italian original title ''Alla luce del sole'') in 2005. He is the first person killed by the Mafia who has been beatified by the Catholic Church.

Ordained as priest

Puglisi was born in Brancaccio, a working-class neighbourhood in Palermo (Sicily), into a family of modest means. His father was a shoemaker and his mother a dressmaker. He entered the seminary at age sixteen. Following ordination, he worked in various parishes, including a country parish afflicted by a bloody vendetta.

Puglisi was ordained as a priest on 2 July 1960 by Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini from Palermo. Ruffini regarded communism as a greater threat than the Mafia. He once questioned the Mafia's very existence. To a journalist's question of "What is the Mafia?" he responded: "So far as I know, it could be a brand of detergent."Memory of anti-Mafia priest pervades summit
National Catholic Reporter, 13 September 2002 This denial persuaded Puglisi of the need to challenge church authorities. "We can, we must criticize the church when we feel it doesn't respond to our expectations, because it's absolutely right to seek to improve it," he said. With his trademark humour, Puglisi added: "But we should always criticize it like a mother, never a mother-in-law!"

Antimafia priest

In 1990, Puglisi returned to his old quarter Brancaccio and became the pastor of San Gaetano's Parish. He spoke out against the Mafia who controlled the area and opened a shelter for underprivileged children. Puglisi had been offered other parishes by the local curia, in less troublesome Palermo neighborhoods, but he opted for San Gaetano.Anti-Mafia priest's death raises questions
National Catholic Reporter, 8 October 1993

With little support from the Palermo archdiocese, Puglisi tried to change his parishioners' mentality, which was conditioned by fear, passivity and word omertà (imposed silence). In his sermons, he pleaded to give leads to authorities about the Mafia's illicit activities in Brancaccio, even if they could not actually name names. He refused their monies when offered for the traditional feast day celebrations, and would not allow the Mafia "men of honour" to march at the head of religious processions.Murder in Palermo: who killed Father Puglisi?
Commonweal, 11 October 2002

He tried to discourage the children from dropping out of school, robbing, drug dealing and selling contraband cigarettes. He ignored a series of warnings and declined to award a contract to a construction firm which had been "indicated" to him by the Mafia for the restoration of the church, where the roof was collapsing.Jamieson, ''The Antimafia'', pp. 140-42 Those parishioners that made attempts to reform matters were sent strong messages. A small group who organized for social improvement found the doors of their houses torched, their phones receiving threats, and their families put on notice that worse things lay in store.

Killing

On 15 September 1993 – Puglisi's 56th birthday – he was killed outside his home by a single bullet shot at point-blank range. He was taken unconscious to a local hospital, where surgeons could not revive him.Anti-Mafia Priest Slain In Palermo
The New York Times, 17 September 1993 The murder was ordered by the local Mafia bosses, the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano.Ecco i killer di Don Puglisi
La Repubblica, 23 June 1994 One of the hitmen who killed Puglisi, Salvatore Grigoli, later confessed and revealed the priest's last words as his killers approached: "I've been expecting you."

Puglisi's murder shocked Italy. There was an immediate call by eight priests in Palermo for the pope to travel to Palermo to be present at his funeral. Pope John Paul II, however, was scheduled to be in Tuscany on that date and did not attend the memorial service. At the funeral Mass the archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo, spoke out very strongly against the Mafia, echoing the Pope's words on a visit to Agrigento, Sicily, just months earlier.

On 14 April 1998, the Mafiosi Gaspare Spatuzza, Nino Mangano, Cosimo Lo Nigro and Luigi Giacalone received life sentences for the killing of Puglisi. The Graviano brothers also received life sentences for ordering the killing.Omicidio Puglisi ergastolo ai Graviano
La Repubblica, 20 February 2001

Legacy

During his visit to Sicily in November 1994, Pope John Paul II praised Puglisi as a "courageous exponent of the Gospel." He urged Sicilians not to allow the priest’s death to have been in vain and warned that silence and passivity about the Mafia was tantamount to complicity.

Puglisi's favorite rhetorical stance – "Se ognuno fa qualcosa, allora si può fare molto" (If everyone does something, then we can do a lot)Don Puglisi, in esclusiva la sua voce: Se ognuno fa qualcosa
, La Stampa, 24 May 2013 – is scrawled on walls in Brancaccio. In 1999, the Cardinal of Palermo started his beatification process, proclaiming Puglisi a Servant of God.
To underscore this anti-Mafia conviction, he composed a parody of the Our Father in the Sicilian language:

On 28 June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI allowed the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints to designate Puglisi a martyr in a first step to beatify the slain priest. The Pope signed a decree acknowledging that Father Puglisi had been killed "in hatred of the faith", meaning that he can be beatified – the last step before sainthood – without a miracle being attributed to his intercession with God.

Beatification

The beatification of Pino Puglisi took place on 25 May 2013. The open-air Mass took place at the Foro Italico 'Umberto I', a large green area that forms one of the promenades of Palermo. The Mass was presided over by Cardinal Paolo Romeo, Metropolitan Archbishop of Palermo, with Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi, Metropolitan Archbishop Emeritus of Palermo, as the papal legate who performed the rite of beatification. Estimates state that 50,000 people attended the Mass. During his Angelus address, the following Sunday, 26 May, Pope Francis stated that the newly beatified Puglisi was first and foremost "an exemplary priest and a martyr", as well as condemning mafia groups.Pope Francis condemns mafia for 'enslaving people'
BBC News, 26 May 2013

Biography and film

* Deliziosi, Francesco (2001). ''Don Puglisi: Vita del prete palermitano ucciso dalla mafia'', Milan: Mondadori,
* Deliziosi, Francesco (2013). ''Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso'', Milan: Rizzoli,
*'' Alla luce del sole'', also known as ''In the Sunlight'', is a film about the life of Puglisi, by Roberto Faenza and starring Luca Zingaretti, was released in Italy in 2005.Film Highlights Slain Priest Who Stood Up to the Mafia
, Zenit, 21 January 2005

See also

*List of victims of the Sicilian Mafia
*Streetwise priest

References

*

External links

*
Official Site

{{DEFAULTSORT:Puglisi, Pino
1937 births
1993 deaths
20th-century venerated Christians
20th-century Christian martyrs
Clergy from Palermo
Italian beatified people
Antimafia
People murdered by the Sicilian Mafia
Beatifications by Pope Francis
20th-century Italian Roman Catholic priests