Bernardo Mattarella

Bernardo Mattarella (15 September 1905 – 1 March 1971) was an Italian politician for the Christian Democrat party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC).

He was a cabinet minister of Italy several times, becoming one of the most important politicians of his generation.

In 1924, he became the secretary of the Italian People's Party (Partito Popolare Italiano), the predecessor of the Christian Democrat party (DC), in Castellammare.

An anti-fascist, he graduated in law in Palermo, where he lived until the Allied invasion of Sicily.

He moved to Rome, where he took part in the founding of the DC in May 1943 with Alcide De Gasperi.

After the invasion of Sicily by allied forces in July 1943, he moved back to Palermo where he became one of the co-founders of the DC on the island and was nominated in the municipal council of Palermo by the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT).

Mattarella held the position of Deputy Minister for Public Education in the governments led by Ivanoe Bonomi (1944–1945).

He expressed his concern in an article published in 1944 attacking the leader of the separatists, Andrea Finocchiaro Aprile: "This man speaks of democracy, but he has the grave fault of having gathered and tried to strengthen the most dangerous and oppressing organization which, for long years, has afflicted our land."

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.

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 June 1946, he was elected to the Italian Constituent Assembly and in 1948 to the new Republican Parliament.

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.

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 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.

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.

He would be re-elected in 1953, 1958, 1963 and 1968.

In 1953, after having been Minister of the Merchant Navy under De Gasperi's short-lived government, he became Minister of Transportation, a position he maintained until 1955.

Later he was Minister of Foreign Trade and Minister of Post and Communications.

A favourable evaluation of his work as the Minister of Foreign Trade and of Post and Communications is expressed in Guido Carli's memories.

In 1962 he was again Minister of Transportation and, in the following year, of Agriculture and Forests.

In 1963–66 he was again Minister of Foreign Trades.

Mattarella was the main opponent of the Sicilian separatism, which had some influence in the years following the end of World War II.

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."

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.

He was the father of Piersanti and Sergio Mattarella, who both went on to become important politicians in their own right; Sergio has been the President of the Italian Republic since 3 February 2015, and Piersanti was President of the Regional Government of Sicily prior to being assassinated in 1980 by Cosa Nostra.

Bernardo Mattarella was born in Castellammare del Golfo, in the province of Trapani in western Sicily as the eldest of seven children in a family of humble origins.

His father was a sailor.