A modern saint named Giuseppe, Blessed Pino Puglisi becomes an instrument of reconciliation. Mafia hatred sheds his blood and gives him the halo of a martyr

di Corrado Various

«O Lord, may I be a valid instrument in your hands for the salvation of the world". This is the simple invocation printed on the holy card for the first Mass of Don Giuseppe Puglisi (1937-1993), martyr at the hands of the mafia. Proclaimed blessed in 2013, he is remembered on October 21, the day of his baptism. Truly, this contemporary of ours in over thirty years of priestly ministry has been a fruitful instrument in the hands of the Lord.

Giuseppe was born on September 15, 1937 in the Brancaccio district of Palermo, the third of four children of a modest family of artisans: his father was a shoemaker, his mother a seamstress. He entered the seminary at the age of sixteen. Ordained a priest on July 2, 1960, shortly after he was assistant priest and chaplain in the Sicilian capital; he immediately committed himself to educational work with young people, but also to initiatives to support the poorest and most disadvantaged families. In 1962 he began teaching religion, but also mathematics, working in various schools until the day of his death.

Throughout his life – lived in poverty – he accepts with docility any task entrusted to him, carrying out to the end, without ever sparing himself, even those that for others might be less welcome. Like when in 1970 he was appointed parish priest of Godrano, a mountain village torn apart by a feud between families that has caused numerous deaths, where for years hatred and division have marked daily life. Here Don Giuseppe – or rather Don Pino, or also “3P” (Father Pino Puglisi), as his students affectionately called him – works with patience, educating people to forgive and promoting pastoral initiatives that will lead the community to a pacification that some have not hesitated to define as a miracle.

"A shepherd according to the heart of Jesus, an outstanding witness of his Kingdom of justice and peace, an evangelical sower of forgiveness and reconciliation", this is how Pope Francis defined him. And Don Puglisi affirmed: "When a person's heart surrenders to God, when he says yes to Him, then the Kingdom comes, then God reigns".

In the summer of 1978, appointed pro-rector of the minor seminary of Palermo, he leaves Godrano. Shortly afterward he also becomes director of the Diocesan Vocations Center and later of the regional one. For years in this area, in addition to school, he dedicates himself with passion to working with young people, without ever forgetting his closeness to the most unfortunate: for many of them he is an affectionate father, a sure guide, an unforgettable traveling companion.

"Out of obedience and love", as he tells his priest friends, in September 1990 he accepts the appointment as parish priest of San Gaetano, in the Brancaccio neighborhood where he was born. Here too, Don Pino is nothing other than "essentially and solely a priest" (as he is defined in the homily for his beatification), among the people and their problems, one of which - but not the only one - is subjection to the domination of the mafia, which has one of its strongholds in that neighborhood and easily draws on situations of poverty and degradation to recruit new members.

In Brancaccio, “3P” carries out initiatives to improve the living conditions of families, to support the education of young people, to push the authorities to intervene and mitigate social hardship. In 1991, the Padre Nostro Center opened, which is still active, a place of evangelization and human promotion, of listening, of education and of any initiative that helps people to “walk alone”.

“Our Father” instead of “Cosa Nostra”: this is the perspective that is offered to the youth of the neighborhood: to be children of a Father who gives life and offers his Son for our salvation, instead of affiliated with godfathers who give death to those who oppose their predominance. This is what is dear to Don Pino, not in itself the fight against the mafia or the solution to social problems. In fact, he says of himself: «I am not a biblical scholar, I am not a theologian or a sociologist, I am only someone who has tried to work for the Kingdom of God».

It did not only offer a call to legality, therefore, but an educational proposal, the experience of true freedom generated by the Christian message; for everyone, but first of all for the poorest, weakest and most unfortunate, who can more easily be attracted by the sirens of easy money, the fruit of violence, by the flattery of a power based on blackmail and oppression. After all, for Don Pino the danger is not so much the mafia organization, but "the mafia mentality, which is any ideology willing to sell off the dignity of man for money".

The work of “3P” and his friends begins to give people a glimpse of the possibility of a different life. His initiatives, his harsh words (but always open to dialogue) against violence and criminal organizations begin to annoy, so much so that they induce the local mafia gang first to advance intimidations against the parish priest and his collaborators, then to decree the death of the priest.

On the evening of September 15, 1993, the day of his 56th birthday, Don Pino was murdered in front of his home with a gunshot. A moment before, he greeted the hitmen with a big smile, saying: «I expected it». A smile that always illuminated the meetings with those who knew him and in which «there was a kind of light». A few years later his murderer declared: «I always remember that smile». That smile – an expression of Christian joy even in the face of death – marked Don Giuseppe Puglisi precisely at the moment in which from an “instrument” he became “wheat”, a grain of wheat that in dying bears much fruit.