Girolamo Li Causi - in Parliament

In Parliament

Li Causi was a member of the Italian Constituent Assembly in 1946 and a Senator from 1948–53 and 1968–74, as well as national deputy in 1953-68 and vice-president of the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 1958-63. While in Parliament he was largely responsible for setting up a parliamentary commission of enquiry into the Mafia, and was vice-president of the Antimafia Commission from 1963-1972.

In an interview in the 1970s he said about the changes in the Mafia:

“… the Mafia has changed; the old sources of wealth, the rackets of cattle-stealing, water control are no longer so lucrative. Real-estate speculation, banks, the trading of jobs and collusion with the power of the State: these are the Mafia’s new fields. The Mafia goes where the power is, that is why the Christian Democrat party is riddled with it, not only on the regional level. The high protectors, the ones elected through the power of the Mafia, are in Rome.”

Although a prominent Communist leader, his career was thwarted by Palmiro Togliatti, the leader of the PCI. Togliatti underestimated the problem of the Mafia, or rather, ignored it. He also did not want to antogonize the Christian Democrats, looking for a historic compromise. Togliatti preferred to avoid that Sicily became a source of irreparable confrontation between the Communists and Christian Democrats, whose Sicilian notables were sometimes contiguous to the Mafia, and some of whom also had responsibilities on a national scale. Togliatti did not hesitate to replace Li Causi as regional secretary of the Party in the late 1950s, at a time in which Mafia rule increased not only in rural areas but also in cities, starting from Palermo.

Li Causi remained an important parliamentary leader at the national level. He died in Rome on April 14, 1977. A year before he died he typically fought his last legal battle. He denounced the responsibility of Giovanni Gioia – at the time the regional secretary of the Christian Democrats in Sicily – in the murder of Pasquale Almerico, the young secretary of the DC in Camporeale who had opposed the entrance of Mafia boss Vanni Sacco in the DC. He also accused another Christian Democrat politician, Vito Ciancimino, of being the center of a web of business and Mafia in Palermo administered by the DC. He was sued for libel by both. He showed up in court. He spoke at length. And he was acquitted in both cases.