Murder in Palermo: who killed Father Puglisi?

September 15, 1993, was Father Giuseppe Puglisi's fifty-sixth birthday. The parish priest of San Gaetano in the poor Brancaccio section of Palermo, Sicily, spent the day in a round of pastoral duties. Known to everyone as "Pino," he performed two weddings, sat in at a meeting, had a conference with parents who were to have their babies baptized, and then attended a small birthday celebration in his honor with friends. Returning home at 8:20 p.m., he had just gotten out of his car when a man stepped from the shadows, put a gun with a silencer to the priest's head, and shot him to death. Four years later, the hit man was arrested. A low-level Mafioso, he told the police that Puglisi had seen him approaching and said, "I was expecting you."

For years, Puglisi had been an outspoken critic of the Mafia. He organized groups in his parish to combat them, and he aided those who fought them in other parts of the city. He refused their monies when offered for the traditional feast day celebrations, and would not allow the "men of honor" to march at the head of religious processions. He instructed young children to hold the Mafia in contempt. When bribes were required to hasten civic improvements, he would denounce those who demanded them, and he railed against their influence on a city government that seemed incapable of providing a middle school or of putting in sewers, although a quarter of Brancaccio's residents had high levels of viral hepatitis.

Born to a working-class family (his father was a shoemaker and his mother a seamstress), Puglisi entered the seminary at age sixteen. Following ordination, he worked in various parishes, including a country parish afflicted by a bloody vendetta. He taught religion in a Palermo high school, an assignment he continued to fill even after he was made pastor of San Gaetano. When he arrived there in 1990, the parish's eighteenth-century church held only 115 persons for a population of 8,000, and its roof was collapsing.

Don Pino well understood that the Mafia was poisonous. It not only sold drugs, fenced stolen goods, and had its hand in the construction industry and politics, but, as Puglisi wrote, it fostered a mentality that eroded both the civic and social life of Sicily. People were cynical about the political structures of both town and region, and apathy ran deep and for generations. Those who made attempts to reform matters were sent a strong message. A small group of householders in Don Pino's parish 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.

It was the children and young people whom Don Pino most wanted to change. He organized camping trips for classes at the high school, and at San Gaetano he hammered away at the same themes: take responsibility for your life and for society; resist the values of the Mafia; refuse to collaborate in their criminality; say no to contraband goods, to discounted (that is, stolen) motorbikes, and to drugs. He encouraged all to participate in such events as the Stations of the Cross, made through the streets of Brancaccio, as an alternative to the traditional religious celebrations, largely paid for by local politicos and men of honor (often the same people).

Don Pino's basic intuition was that the ideology of the Mafia was radically pagan and profoundly anti-Christian. His struggle was a kind of exorcism in the name of the gospel. To underscore this conviction, he composed a parody of the Our Father in the Sicilian dialect. It can be found in a wonderful new book on his life by the prominent journalist Francesco Deliziosi, a parishioner and intimate friend of the priest (Don Puglisi: Vita del prete palermitano ucciso dalla mafia, Mondadori, 2001). In my free translation, it reads:

   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.

When news of Don Pino's death spread, there was a huge outcry. During that particularly violent period, the Mafia had assassinated public prosecutors, set off bombs throughout Italy, and left the streets of Palermo stained with blood. The murder of a priest, however, seemed to cross a line. Huge crowds followed his funeral cortege. A year later, when Pope John Paul II visited Catania and Syracuse in Sicily, he referred to Don Pino as a courageous witness to the gospel. In 2000, at a millennial ceremony in Rome's Colosseum honoring the martyrs of the twentieth century, Don Pino was again held up as a witness to the faith.

Soon after his death, petitions to open a dossier for Don Pino's eventual canonization were sent to the archbishop of Palermo, Salvatore De Giorgi. That dossier has been completed and forwarded to Rome. Deliziosi, Don Pino's biographer, notes the paradox of a parish priest who died at the hands of Christians who were baptized in the same parish. But, the paradox is not novel. The twentieth century gave us many examples (think of El Salvador) of baptized Catholics killing priests, religious sisters, and lay persons, often in the name of an anti-Marxist Christian civilization.

Yet, it may be asked, would not the beatification of Don Pino Puglisi be little more than a futile gesture with no practical impact on the lives of Sicilians? It is true that John Paul II has beatified and canonized with prodigality. It is likewise true that some of those called to the altars during his pontificate have caused us to think again about martyrdom (recall the furor over the case of Edith Stein). A clue to how John Paul II views martyrdom is easily found in his various pronouncements, particularly in the encyclical Veritatis splendor. For John Paul II, when a person stands for truth at the cost of his or her life, that person bears witness to the one who said "I am the Truth." As the pope understands Don Puglisi, the priest was a courageous witness to the truth of the gospel. An Italian theologian cited by Deliziosi has said of Oscar Romero, Maximilian Kolbe, and Don Puglisi that they died not like the ancient martyrs in odium fidei (because of hatred for the faith) but in odium amoris (because of hatred for love). Perhaps such figures can be understood best as what the Russian Orthodox Church calls "Passion Bearers," that is, those who die upholding the principle of nonviolence.

The witness of people like Don Puglisi reminds us that martyrdom is not ancient history; it is today's news. When the stained glass windows of tomorrow's churches are designed, their new iconography will include guns with silencers, electric-shock instruments, barbed wire, and gas chambers to accompany Lawrence's gridiron, Catherine's wheel, and Sebastian's arrows.

Lawrence S. Cunningham is the John A. O'Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.