Don Antonio Coluccia, 49, who lives under round-the-clock protection owing to numerous threats from criminal organisations, was reportedly assaulted on Sunday night with planks, bottles and sticks in the Quarticciolo district, of the capital, where he was leading an anti-crime march.
“Your time is running out – we will kill you,” someone is reported to have shouted from a window as the attack took place in the street below.
The priest, targeted by a Roman mafia group for his outspokenness and for having converted the confiscated home of a mafia boss into a home for poor people and drug addicts, was whisked to safety by officers from his security detail.
“I will return. I am committed to serving the city,” Coluccia told Roma Today on Tuesday after news of the attack was made public. “I will always strive for justice for the honest citizens residing in this neighbourhood. On Sunday, I had stopped to speak with some youths, then what happened happened. The situation here is dire.”
He added: “It is my duty to raise awareness in areas plagued by drugs, neglect, and decay.”
Luisa Regimenti, a security adviser for the Lazio region, said: “It was a violent mafioso attack. I am certain that Don Coluccia will not be intimidated but instead will redouble his efforts to restore dignity and hope to the many upstanding citizens living in the neighbourhood.”
This is not the first time Don Coluccia has faced aggression or threats from criminal groups. The violent warnings started in 2014, when Coluccia’s house and car were vandalised. In June 2015, two men opened fire on him, missing the cleric but slightly wounding a passerby.
In August 2023, a man attempted to run him over with a scooter in Tor Bella Monaca, a poor district in the outskirts of Rome. The assailant was later arrested for attempted murder. Last winter, in the same district, refuse bins were set ablaze within yards of where Coluccia was expected to be present.
Dozens of priests across Italy have been victims of attacks and intimidation by the mafia.
Father Maurizio Patriciello has been living under police protection since a bomb, accompanied by the message “get out of our way”, exploded last February by the gate of his church in Caivano, a town on the outskirts of Naples. The threat was the Camorra’s response to Patriciello’s battle against the mafia organisation’s illegal dumping of toxic waste across farmland in the Campania region of southern Italy.
Father Luigi Ciotti, another antimafia cleric, has been living under police escort for more than a decade. The priest founded the Libera organisation, which identifies and takes confiscated assets from the mafia and puts them to humanitarian use.
As the Sicilian mobster Marino Mannoia once told the FBI, members of the mafia consider themselves unpunishable – even before God – but they do fear a church that interferes with their business or points out the incompatibility between crime and the gospel.
In 1993, Father Pino Puglisi condemned the mafia in Palermo. He was killed on 15 September 1993, his 56th birthday. He was beatified in 2013.
In March 1994, Father Giuseppe Diana was killed by the Camorra in Casal di Principe, near Naples.