378. Pino Puglisi the anti-Mafia Priest: Beatified
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| Fr Pino Puglisi |
Fr Giuseppe Puglisi, was beatified today by Pope Francis after 20 years
he had been shot at point blank by the Mafia.
Nearly two thousand years ago the early Christians were put to death just
because they were Christians because they believed in Jesus, they talked about
him, they spread news about him, they converted pagans and they would not be
silent, for this they were martyred.
But Fr Pino did none of this, or rather, that it is no longer a “crime”
to be a Christian in the modern world and therefore could talk about Jesus and
convert people to Jesus as much as he liked, for this he would be praised not
persecuted.
However, Fr Pino also criticized the Church leaders in Palermo, the city he
was a Parish Priest, for being passive towards the Mafia who had turned the
suburbs into a blood bath of vendetta. So why therefore has the Church decided
to make Fr Pino a Saint?
It is never easy to understand why some people become saints and others
don’t. When we look at the list of saints on the calendar in not so recent
times and find nothing to note but that they were holy we tend to raise an
eyebrow especially when no details are known. But with modern saints, we know
exactly why they are made saints and with Fr Pino in particular there is no
obscurity.
He it was, who refused to remain silent against the Mafia. He armed his parishioners
with courage to denounce the killers, he protected the children from the Mafia
by encouraging them to remain at school and not take to the streets with drug
dealings and other illicit rackets set-up by the Mafia. He refused money from
them and did not allow Mafia leaders to head religious ceremonies as was the
norm.
Because Fr Pino, refused to bow down to the Mafia, because he was a
priest defending his parishioners and because he did not remain silent against
the Mafia Fr Pino was killed in the same way as those early Christians had
been- “In hatred of the faith.”
Related articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pino_Puglisi
