His life suddenly changed on May 23 30 years ago. The phone call from a friend who tries to understand if she has already heard, the distraught look of her husband who has heard the news of her, the images of her news that tell her that her brother, Giovanni Falcone, has been killed. The new life of Maria Falcone, a high school law professor, mother of four children, who became an ambassador of legality by tragic fate begins with a tragic mourning.
The days following the explosion of Capaci, which cost the life of the magistrate, his wife Francesca Morvillo and the three escort agents, are convulsive. The comings and goings of condolence visits, some “excellent” such as that of the former Head of State Cossiga, the state funeral and the revolt of the Palermo people, the city covered with white sheets that have become symbols of rebellion against the mafia, the pilgrimage under the tree in front of Falcone’s house. And it is a note left by a Palermo from Ballarò, one of the popular districts of Palermo, to push Maria Falcone to take up her brother’s legacy and perpetuate her memory. “It was written that the Mafia had thought of killing Giovanni, but that instead it had only awakened consciences”, says Maria Falcone. “For me it was a stimulus not to shut myself up in my pain and to react. I decided a few days later – she explains – she to work on the creation of a foundation that had the purpose of preserving the memory of my brother’s work”.
Thus was born the Falcone foundation, established with the moral and ideal contribution of many friends and colleagues of the judge such as Giuseppe Ayala, former prosecutor, Leonardo Guarnotta and Giuseppe Di Lello, members of the anti-mafia pool, the former judge on the sidelines of the maxi trial Piero Grasso.
Since then Maria Falcone has never stopped and has toured Italy far and wide. “I started from schools – she says – Because so many teachers invited me to talk about my brother: first in Sicily, then throughout the country”. Then it was the turn of the city assemblies, of visits to prisons. “I remember a year in Calabria: the inmates organized an auction of paintings painted by them, it was very touching”.
Falcone’s commitment becomes more institutional and organized with the beginning of the collaboration with the Ministry of Education. “We knew that school was the most important area to work on to defeat the mafia – she explains -. As Bufalino said, Cosa Nostra is won with an army of teachers”. Thus was born the ship of legality that every 23 May, until the pandemic, brought thousands of children to Palermo. “The city where Cosa Nostra has been bossy for years was filled with young people who made a day of mourning a party” explains Maria Falcone who condensed these thirty years of activity in the book, “The legacy of a judge” , written with Lara Sirignano, which will be presented on Thursday 19 May at the Turin Book Fair.
30 years have passed since the Capaci explosion, the time of a generation, the right time for a balance sheet.
“Obviously, the mafia is not defeated – Maria Falcone is sure – but much has been done: culturally, judicially with the arrests and convictions of many mafia members, and in legislation with the anti-mafia rules that make us a model in the world”. “We must never be distracted because the mafia has the ability to take back what we have taken away – concludes Falcone’s sister -. But I am convinced that he did not win and that Giovanni’s work was not in vain”.
Source: Ansa
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