Una strage dimenticata: gli attentati alle chiese romane di San Giovanni in Laterano e San Giorgio al Velabro

Abstract

The essay aims to shed light on and bring back into focus an almost forgotten episode of the history of our Republic: the attacks that, on the 28th of July 1993, critically damaged the Roman churches of San Giovanni in Laterano and San Giorgio in Velabro, and wounded 22 people. It took several years of restoration works to repair those damages. Starting from a field research conducted during a sabbatical year, using 57 long interviews, the text lets the protagonists illustrate their stories, which intertwine with the reasons behind the attacks, the memories, and the subsequent events. What comes out is a varied landscape, which, among admissions and forgetfulness, depicts the Church as unwilling to recall the event, even though its unique and sacrilegious value is recognized. Never before that moment, Cosa Nostra (and its faceless prompters) had dared challenge the religious world striking at its heart, destroying two of its most significant churches and killing, on the 15th of September 1993, don Pino Puglisi. The essay is a narrative that interweaves the memories of the protagonists with the aim to cause a short-circuit by acting as the “killjoy of memory” (Annette Wieviorka) and bringing out interesting leads and hermeneutic hypothesis that are still being considered by magistrates. However, the primary aim of this work is to bring together the witnesses that end up making up a whole, multifaceted jigsaw puzzle that, following Bobbio’s teaching, wishes to plant more doubts than harvest certainties.