Italy – Simply priests
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17 September 2020
Italy – Simply priests

(ANS - Rome) - On 15 September 1993, in Palermo, Fr Pino Puglisi was brutally killed by the mafia. A symbolic coincidence, on the same day of this year Fr Roberto Malgesini was killed. Fr Puglisi was bothersome because he distanced young people from the world of crime, removed from the street those boys who, without his help, would have been sucked into the life of organized crime, used for small robberies and drug dealing. Fr Malgesini had always been involved in helping people in difficulty, the poorest people. For years he translated the Christian message into practice, bringing breakfast to the poor, accompanying them to doctors himself, managing the municipal canteen and dormitory, welcoming people, mainly migrants.

Fr Antonio Carbone, SDB, Salesian priest, Rector of the Salesian house in Torre Annunziata - in an area heavily challenged by the presence of organized crime - thus commented on this double sacrifice.

 

They were two priests who loved being close to their community to the point of losing their lives for their love of neighbor, the other. The names that newspapers often use - "priest of the least", "street priest", "anti-clan priest" - are no good because every priest, as a priest, is that. Rather, there should be no "priests of the powerful", "sacristy priests", "Camorra priests" ...

I was struck by the death of Father Roberto as I am struck by the death of each of my peers, because I think that on that road, in that coffin, it could have been me. And then if it is a priest you see yourself in one who has shared the same choice of life as you. I think back to the difficult moments of coherence with the Gospel that costs, and puts many priests at risk of isolation from the ecclesial hierarchies and political classes, or from life itself, when you have to deal with the most fragile or say or do things that criminals do not like.

I think back to the promise I made in 2000 when I came to Torre Annunziata for the first time: even if they had slapped me, which happened to my predecessors, I would have returned to the oratory the next day with my bruises. I think back to the fear of when I saw scissors pointed at me in the foster family home by a poor Christ in the throes of a crisis of hysteria; I think back to the fear of leaving the cemetery, after the funeral rite of two Camorra men killed in an ambush, when I did not hesitate to say forcefully to the wives, children and young affiliates present that the Camorra only leads to the creation of orphans and widows.

I think back to the many priests who 'throw blood' in the courtyards of the oratories, in the recovery communities, on their territories affected by the Camorra culture, priests who risk martyrdom every day.

But the poor are the true flesh of Christ, as Pope Francis reminds us and as Father Malgesini often repeated.

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