Mattarella has been accused several times of having links with the
Sicilian Mafia. These accusations were always rejected in court. The alleged links between Mattarella and the Mafia are described in several reports and books. According to a report of the section of the
Communist Party of Trapani, which was reproduced in the final report of the
Antimafia Commission in 1976, Mattarella had an excellent relationship with the Mafia boss of
Alcamo,
Vincenzo Rimi. The Communist minority of the Parliamentary Antimafia Commission described Mattarella as the man "who had striven to absorb Mafia forces into the Christian Democrats so as to use them as an instrument of power." , the future president of Italy, in 1963 He was accused of having approached
Calogero Vizzini, supposedly the most influential Mafia boss at the time to abandon the Sicilian separatists and join the Christian Democrats. The accusation was made by the Italian communists on the basis of an article that Mattarella published on the national Christian democrat newspaper,
Il Popolo, on 24 September 1944. This article does not contain any invitation neither to Vizzini nor to the Mafia to join the Christian Democrats. On the contrary, the article accused two families of the town of
Villalba (Vizzini and Cipolla) of being responsible of the violence in that town. The article was addressed to those who had voted for the separatists, which were invited to change their vote. In a letter to
Luigi Sturzo, written shortly after the election of the
Constituent Assembly of Italy in 1946, Mattarella wrote about the electoral and political influence of the Mafia: "The electoral fight has been hard and tiring, but it has granted us the result of the full failure of the Mafia: it has been defeated by the state ballot, which has freed electors from old style pressures, which have been now and then renewed." According to a report of the Carabinieri on the electoral campaign of 1946 in
Salemi, Mattarella gathered with known mafiosi, among them
Ignazio Salvo, one of the Salvo cousins who became intermediates between the Mafia and the DC. Mattarella supported
Vito Ciancimino – the first Italian politician to be found guilty of Mafia membership. Ciancimino became a protégé of Mattarella, who supported his political and financial career. In 1950 Ciancimino obtained concessions for all railway transport inside Palermo. The three other firms that had made a bid were put out of the game, because Ciancimino's bid was accompanied by a letter of Mattarella, who was then Minister of Transports.
Portella della Ginestra massacre He was accused of being one of the men behind the
Portella della Ginestra massacre, when 11 persons were killed and 33 wounded during
May Day celebrations in Sicily on 1 May 1947. The bloodbath was perpetrated by the bandit
Salvatore Giuliano who was possibly backed by
the Mafia. In the Portella della Ginestra massacre trial in 1950–51 in
Viterbo, Giuliano's right-hand man
Gaspare Pisciotta said: "Those who have made promises to us are called Bernardo Mattarella,
Prince Alliata, the monarchist MP Marchesano and also Signor
Scelba, Minister for Home Affairs ... it was Marchesano, Prince Alliata and Bernardo Mattarella who ordered the massacre of Portella di Ginestra. Before the massacre they met
Giuliano..." Mattarella, Alliata and Marchesano were declared innocent by the Court of Appeal of Palermo, at a trial which dealt with their alleged role in the event. The Court of Viterbo decided that Pisciotta had made false accusations. In his final statement the public prosecutor affirmed that Pisciotta was unreliable and that his accusations against Scelba and Mattarella were untrustworthy. During the trial, Giuliano's mother and some members of the gang said that Pisciotta's statements were part of a plot designed to put the investigations on the wrong track. This was confirmed before the Parliamentary
Antimafia Commission by two more members of the gang, who had joined Pisciotta in this plot. "It was simply an infamous act that even the toughness of the political game cannot justify," Mattarella later said about the accusation. According to some sources, he had opposed the constitution of the Parliamentary
Antimafia Commission in 1958. Others maintain that he had been the only Sicilian minister in the Government of the time who was favourable to its constitution. In an interview in the newspaper
Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, he put forward several proposals that influenced the constitution of the Commission in 1963.
Accusations by Danilo Dolci The Antimafia activist
Danilo Dolci also accused Mattarella of collusion with the Mafia. Dolci had been gathering evidence on the links between the Mafia and politicians for the
Antimafia Commission, which was established in 1963. At a press conference in September 1965, he presented dozen of testimonies of people who had supposedly seen Mattarella meeting with leading mafiosi. Mattarella sued Dolci and his assistant Alasia for libel. Mattarella's lawsuit for libel allowed Dolci "ampia facoltà di prova", meaning that the defendant would have been declared innocent if he had been able to show that he had offended the plaintiff on the basis of true evidence. In the ensuing two-year trial, dozens of witnesses were heard and many documents were considered. Dolci made an application for an amnesty, but was sentenced to two years imprisonment for libel. He never served the verdict, because of a general pardon. When the Court refused to allow new evidence from witnesses, Dolci and Alasia decided that the trial was a travesty. They announced that under these circumstances they would no longer attempt to defend themselves. The remainder of the trial, therefore, took place with Dolci and Alasia absent from the courtroom. Dolci responded by broadcasting his opinions over a private radio station, which was promptly closed. On 21 June 1967, the Court of Rome, sentenced that Mattarella offered reliable evidence of his opposition to the Mafia in the entire course of his political career. The statements collected by the defendants – Dolci and Alasia – were considered nothing more than "deplorable gossip, malicious rumour or even simple lies." The Court was of the opinion that Mattarella "never had relations with the Mafia environment." Mattarella won the trial but lost a cabinet post in the new government of
Aldo Moro. According to the journalist and politician
Luigi Barzini, who had been a member of the Antimafia Commission, few of Dolci's charges against Mattarella, most of which were undoubtedly true but not all as decisive as he thought, could be proved in a court of law, as Sicilian witnesses rarely repeat in public what they might have said secretly to a trusted friend.
Other accusations US gangster
Joe Bonanno claimed that Mattarella was among the welcoming party that met him when he landed at Fiumicino airport in Rome in October 1957 for a vacation. Both had grown up in
Castellammare del Golfo. However, the claim seems to be fictional: it describes Bonanno's trip to Italy in September 1957, in the company of F. Pope, the editor of the newspaper "Il progresso italo americano". As reported by the same newspaper they arrived in Rome on 13 September of that year. According to Pope and Italian newspapers, Mattarella was not in Rome that day. As Minister of the Post, was in another remote Italian town to inaugurate a public work. In 1996, 25 years after Mattarella died,
Francesco Di Carlo, a Mafia
pentito, said he had been a "man of honour" – a member of Cosa Nostra. His son Sergio Mattarella dismissed such accusations as ridiculous. According to another pentito,
Francesco Marino Mannoia, Mattarella was close with the Mafia boss
Francesco Paolo Bontade, but Mannoia said he did not know if Mattarella actually had been a member of the Mafia. ==Death and legacy==