For the Love of His People

In Casal di Principe, where the Camorra enforced silence, Don Peppe Diana chose to confront the clans from the pulpit, the classroom, and the street. His murder, in 1994, failed to erase what he had set in motion.

Peppe Diana: for the love of the people.

Don Peppe Diana woke up very early, as he did every day. It was not a habit acquired in the seminary, but one rooted in his rural childhood, helping his parents in the fields. The Church of San Nicola di Bari in Casal di Principe had been under his care for nearly five years. As in most churches in southern Italy, masses and ceremonies were held at least twice a day, early in the morning and later in the evening. Sometimes, there were even three masses in a single day.

Around six in the morning, he made his way to the sacristy. Most of those present at that hour were elderly women. Some stood upright, others hunched, with arms thin or sturdy, shaped by decades of labor. They all arrived and took the same seat on the wooden bench. They knelt before the cross, made the sign of the cross, and began to pray. Some gave thanks for recent good news. Others asked for better economic conditions or relief from the failing health of a loved one. Some even prayed for the miracle of absolution for relatives convicted of mafia-related crimes.

A photographer had already arrived and was in the sacristy—the space reserved for the priest, his assistants, and trusted parishioners. As a friend of Don Peppe, Augusto Di Meo had free access to the sacristy. Before Don Peppe and Augusto reached the church, a car with several people inside was already parked in the square in front of it. One of them stepped out of the car at 7:22 or 7:23 in the morning. He was about forty years old, with long hair and a black jacket.

At 7:25, the man opened the sacristy door while the priest was placing the stole over his shoulders to begin mass. “Who is Don Peppe?” he asked, without even noticing the priest’s vestments. Don Giuseppe “Peppe” Diana turned and replied, “I am.” The visitor pulled out a 7.62-caliber semi-automatic pistol and fired four shots into the priest’s head. The devil smiled in the house of God.

Growing Up Under the Camorra

Giuseppe Diana was born on July 4, 1958, in Casal di Principe, a town of fewer than fifteen thousand inhabitants. His father, Gennaro, and his mother, Yolanda, were farmers. As a teenager, while attending secondary school a few kilometers from home, his vocation began to take shape, turning toward God. He drew close to the religious and social spaces that supported a community held hostage by poverty and by a state weakened and consumed by the Camorra, the region’s criminal organization.

As Don Peppe prepared for his pastoral work, the recruitment of young people by warring Camorra clans intensified. His dedication to working with youth led him to formally join the scouts. Four years spent working alongside them while completing his seminary studies helped shape his character. He was ordained as a priest on March 14, 1982, and his connection to local organizations deepened. Together, they created activities for young people—a strategy aimed at preventing, or at least hindering, mafia recruitment.

From its origins, the Camorra fed on the young, the excluded. From them, it drew the lifeblood it needed to survive. With enormous criminal profits, it became the Italian mafia organization responsible for the highest number of deaths in its long history.

During the 1980s, the “Casalesi clan” dominated the impoverished region. Its founder, Antonio Bardellino, concentrated power and generated unrest among several factions. Gradually, they organized themselves and unleashed a mafia war to challenge his control. Bardellino’s own lieutenants devised the plan to overthrow him.

Bardellino was apparently killed in 1988—his body was never found—and Francesco “Sandokan” Schiavone rose to the top of the organization. The new criminal alliances among the clans did not prevent another wave of violence. With the aim of disciplining and sending a message to enemies—and especially to allies—Schiavone ordered countless murders and disappearances, placing the region among the most dangerous in Europe.

Where the Devil Rules

On September 19, 1989, Don Peppe was appointed parish priest of the Church of San Nicola di Bari in Casal di Principe. The front pews of his church were always reserved for the most vulnerable—especially for the “African brothers” who were exploited in agricultural labor, illegal waste processing, and various local industries.

Don Peppe was also a skilled and prolific writer. Always with pen and paper in hand, many of his homilies became pamphlets distributed during or after mass. One of them was titled “No More to the Armed Dictatorship of the Camorra.” He publicly denounced both the camorristi and the officials connected to them. Don Peppe believed that the Gospel not only comforted the soul but compelled him to denounce the criminal abuse suffered by the community: “The prophet must act as a sentinel: if he sees injustice, he denounces it and recalls God’s original plan.”

In a town where the devil seemed to act as its master, the grief, the pain, and the love-filled words of a priest reached the most remote corners of Italy—and, above all, Rome. The war among the Casalesi continued to claim the lives of young people as offerings. On June 21, 1991, a twenty-three-year-old Jehovah’s Witness and construction worker, Angelo Riccardo, was killed and became one of many innocent victims of the Camorra. “I don’t care who God is. I care which side He is on,” Don Peppe said in response to the crime.

That pamphlet against the Camorra’s armed dictatorship caused such upheaval within the political structure in Rome that, whether out of conviction or convenience, on September 29, 1991, the municipalities of Casal di Principe—governed by a cousin of Sandokan Schiavone—along with Mondragone and Casapesenna, were dissolved after mafia infiltration was confirmed.

“For the Love of My People, I Will Not Remain Silent”

The Christmas Eve mass is the most important of the year, and the entire community tries to attend. In 1991, together with other parish priests from Casal di Principe and the surrounding region, Don Peppe wrote a letter that was read in every church. Titled “For the Love of My People, I Will Not Remain Silent,” it became a collective, amplified, and direct denunciation of the Camorra and its criminal system.

The letter offered a precise description of the Camorra and its activities: “Today, the Camorra is a form of terrorism that spreads fear, imposes its laws, and seeks to become an endemic component of Campanian society.” It went on to denounce the responsibility and complicity of growing sectors of the state: “The inefficiency of employment, health, and other policies can only create distrust among citizens… The Camorra fills a power vacuum left by a state whose peripheral administrations are marked by corruption, delay, and favoritism.”

The letter became a milestone in the fight against organized crime. Confusion spread through the community, which did not know how to react—nor how the Camorra would respond. It ended with a call for all Christians to sustain denunciation and resistance: “Our communities may need new models of behavior… of testimony, of example, in order to be credible.”

Where There Is No State, There Is the Camorra

The 1990s were a time of profound upheaval in Italy. In Caserta, Sandokan Schiavone had regained his freedom after serving a short sentence for illegal possession of weapons and a public shooting. Back on the streets, he revitalized the clan’s activities and expanded money-laundering operations across Europe, Central America, and South America.

Meanwhile, in Sicily, Cosa Nostra launched a series of attacks against state officials—especially magistrates—journalists, and political figures who opposed it. Among the most shocking were the murders of Giovanni Falcone, his wife, and his escort on May 23, 1992, and of Paolo Borsellino and his escort three months later.

These attacks prompted a response from the Catholic Church. In April 1993, during a pastoral visit to Sicily, Pope John Paul II broke protocol and stopped in front of the home of the parents of Rosario Livatino, the anti-mafia judge killed three years earlier. They showed him their son’s notebooks. In one of them, the Pope read: “We will not be asked whether we were believers, but whether we were credible.”

“Where there is no state, there is the Camorra” was another phrase frequently written in Livatino’s diary. Don Peppe adopted it and spread it across Campania: “Where the state is absent, the Camorra flourishes. Where there are no rules, lawlessness and oppression prevail. We must reach the root of the Camorra to heal what is rotten.”

These and other ideas were part of a 1992 interview in which Don Peppe explained his vision of institutions such as the Church and the State: “We must bear greater witness to a Church at the service of the poor… where poverty, marginalization, unemployment, and misery prevail, it is easy for the Camorra to grow.” Regarding the role of the State, he said: “To politicians, old and new, we say: stop improvising. It is impossible to govern without programs, without a true political education.”

Cosa Nostra first, and then the Camorra, responded to the Church’s denunciations with direct attacks. On July 27, 1993, two bombs exploded in Rome, damaging the Church of San Giorgio al Velabro and the Basilica of St. John Lateran. These attacks were part of a strategy to pressure the State—but also a clear message to the Church. Four months later, on September 15, 1993, on his birthday, Father Pino Puglisi was murdered in Palermo.

At 7:25

The early 1990s were a time of major change for Italian society and for the Camorra. The political and economic crisis triggered by the “Mani Pulite” investigations put the Italian political system at risk and opened the door to businessmen with fortunes of dubious origin. At the beginning of 1994, one of them became Prime Minister for the first time.

This upheaval allowed camorristi who had previously been targeted by Sandokan Schiavone to seek revenge and destabilize the existing criminal order. Nunzio De Falco, whose brother had been killed by Schiavone, believed that killing a priest who openly defied the Camorra would force other priests back into silence. At the same time, he hoped that authorities would blame Schiavone for the crime.

Giuseppe Quadrano, a member of the Camorra, was the man who, on March 20, 1994, opened the sacristy door. “Who is Don Peppe?” he asked. When Don Peppe replied, “I am,” Quadrano drew his semi-automatic pistol and fired four shots into his head.

The Battle for Memory

After the confusion and fear that paralyzed him, Augusto Di Meo ran out of the sacristy, crossed the church—where no one was praying anymore—and went to a Carabinieri post. His presence as a witness made it possible to identify the gunman, Giuseppe Quadrano, an ally of the De Falco clan.

In the hours and days that followed, the Camorra launched a defamation campaign. Through the newspaper Corriere di Caserta, they spread lies similar to those used against many innocent victims of the mafia. The mud on which Don Peppe had walked to rescue young people from the Camorra was thrown back onto his memory.

The newspaper claimed that he had been killed by a jealous husband, that he was part of a network of pedophiles, or that he had ties to the Camorra. They even published that weapons used by the mafia were hidden inside the church.

Giuseppe Quadrano was eventually arrested on March 21, 1995—one year and one day after the crime—in Valencia, Spain. The instigator of the murder, Nunzio De Falco, was arrested in 1997, also in Spain, which had become a refuge and operational center for many Camorra fugitives.

Don Peppe’s memory did not fade. On the contrary, it multiplied and spread throughout the region. With the support of the anti-mafia association Libera, agricultural cooperatives were established on land confiscated from the clans of Caserta. These cooperatives, bearing Don Peppe’s name, employ migrants and disadvantaged individuals and produce local goods.

Since 2006, the Don Peppe Diana Committee has sought to open a process for his beatification. On March 21, 2014, during a vigil marking the Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Mafia, Don Luigi Ciotti presented Don Peppe’s stole to Pope Francis, who wore it as he blessed hundreds of victims’ families present in the church.

Don Peppe Diana did not remain silent. And others began to speak.