page_title: Pino Puglisi
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Pino Puglisi / Legacy
caption_attribution_description: Português: Cathedral of Palermo
context_page_description: Giuseppe "Pino" Puglisi 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, and portrayed in a film, Come Into the Light. He was the first one killed by the Mafia to be declared Blessed by the Catholic Church.
context_section_description: 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.
caption: Tomb of Pino Puglisi at the Cathedral of Palermo.
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