Feastday: October 21
Birth: 1937
Death: 1993
Beatified: 25 May 2013, Foro Italico 'Umberto I', Palermo, Sicily by Salvatore De Giorgi (On behalf of Pope Francis)
Blessed Fr. Don Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi was beatified on May 25, a mere 20 years after his martyrdom at the hands of the Sicilian Mafia. His beatification represents a new era of defiance of powerful organized crime families in Italy and around the world.
Don Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi was born on September 15, 1937 in the Palermo neighborhood of Brancaccio, in Palermo, Sicily. His father was a cobbler and his mother made dresses. From this working class home, Puglisi learned the roughness of his crime-ridden neighborhood and refused to participate in the petty criminal activity on the streets.
He joined the seminary at the youthful age of 16, with an aim to become a priest and fight back against rampant crime and corruption.
In 1960, at the age of 23, Puglisi was ordained a priest and sent to work in various parishes. His archbishop, Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini had a passive attitude towards the Mafia, even claiming at one time that they were fictional, and that nobody knew what the Mafia really was. "So far as I know, it could be a brand of detergent," he once denied.
Cardinal Ruffini argued that communism was the greater threat to the people and that the Mafia was simply part of the fabric of local society.
However, Fr. Puglisi was well aware of the Mafia influence in his parish and suggested that Cardinal Ruffini needed to be corrected, albeit he added we "should always criticize it [the Church] like a mother, never a mother in law."
In the years following, he served in various parishes, criticizing the criminal culture and calling on children to attend school and refrain from vice.
Fr. Puglisi was especially renown for his humor as well as his tough stance against the Mafia. He refused money from the organization and denied awarding a contract to repair his church roof to an organization the Mafia "recommended."
In 1990, he had returned to his native Brancaccio and became priest at San Gaetano's Parish. He continued to speak boldly against the Mafia. He asked the authorities to move against known Mafia members and publicly denounced their activities.
He refused to permit known Mafia gangsters from marching at the head of religious processions, a Mafia tradition, and was the first known priest to confront men attempting to do so.
Unable to control him with money or intimidation, Fr, Puglisi became a target for the organization.
On September 15, 1993, two hitmen approached him in front of his parish. Fr. Puglisi spoke his last words, greeting the men saying, "I've been expecting you." One of the men then fired a single bullet at point-blank range, rendering him unconscious.
The bold priest was rushed to the hospital where doctors could not revive him. He died on his birthday.
Following his death, there was a loud public outcry for justice. Anti-Mafia graffiti was painted across the region with his signature quote, "And what if somebody did something?"
The hitmen and their associates who were sent to kill Puglisi were eventually arrested and the gunman, Gaspare Spatuzza, confessed to the killing. He, along with three other men were given life sentences in 1998 for murdering the priest.
Church leaders, now emboldened by the anger of the people and the arrest of Puglisi's murderers, began to join the outcry and the Mafia lost influence across the region. In 1999, the Cardinal of Palermo initiated the beatification process for Puglisi, saying he was a "servant of God." He also warned the people against remaining silent about Mafia activities.
The beatification of Fr. Puglisi took place on May 25, 2013 with a Mass performed by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Paolo Romero.
Pope Francis, who was unable to attend the Mass because of a previous engagement, called Fr. Puglisi a martyr and an exemplary priest. He also condemned the Mafia and all criminal organizations.
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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." 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 priest 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.
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.
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. 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. The murder was ordered by the local Mafia bosses, the brothers Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano. 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.
Legacy
Tomb of Pino Puglisi at the Cathedral of Palermo.
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) – 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:
O godfather to me and my family, You are a man of honor and worth. Your name must be respected. Everyone must obey you. Everyone must do what you say for this is the law of those who do not wish to die. You give us bread, work; who wrongs you, pays. Do not pardon; it is an infamy. Those who speak are spies. I put my trust in you, godfather. Free me from the police and the law.
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 Paolo Cardinal Romeo, Metropolitan Archbishop of Palermo, with Salvatore Cardinal 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.
Biography and film
- Deliziosi, Francesco (2001). Don Puglisi: Vita del prete palermitano ucciso dalla mafia, Milan: Mondadori, ISBN 88-04-55377-4
- Deliziosi, Francesco (2013). Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso, Milan: Rizzoli, ISBN 978-8817066587
- 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.
