ELSIE L. DURSI Speaking out in unity demolishes oppression

The experience of traveling to Palermo, Italy, to study its renaissance is still instructing me.
My exposure to overwhelming evidence of radical change in a culture was so intense that I had to put on hold a great deal of information for processing later. The story of an entire society's coming together through law enforcement, public leadership, religion, education and the press is heartening and refreshing news for this through-and-through Youngstowner.
Instead of the old secrecy and despair, men and women, boys and girls are living in a new world of hope. Their minds are their own now, no longer controlled by the forces of greed and corruption nor impoverished by a lack of their own history. They are free to make their own way in a lawful, just society.
Because we learned so definitively in Palermo that this comprehensive change comes only through cooperation, my disappointment was predictable when some of our local elected officials discounted, even disparaged, our trip and the people who went. Their negative response reminds me of some history I became aware of in Sicily. I was fortunate to learn about both the seeds of one part of this transformation and the typical resistance met by those who wanted change.
Speaking out: In the early 1960s, a brave, faithful man, Pastor Pietro Waldo Panascia, a Waldensian Methodist, took his Christianity seriously and made a public statement that the clergy, church people and the general citizenry, including public officials, must respond to the slaying of nine people by the Mafia.
Panascia didn't get the response he desired initially. He was ridiculed and denounced for speaking up. A powerful cardinal went to the pope reporting that Panascia was "bringing a bad name to Sicily and trying to get publicity for himself and his small church."
Further, the cardinal said, every place had corruption and there was nothing worse happening in Sicily.
Panascia knew this wasn't so, and he began to write to the cardinal publicly through open letters in the newspaper. Eventually, these two men began a real dialogue that initiated the powerful anti-crime message preached from Catholic pulpits in Italy today.
Panascia is fortunate to live long enough to see some fruits of his labors. I met him at worship in Palermo. He was deeply moved that there was an international symposium on fighting crime in Palermo and that one of the delegates came to worship at his church.
Another case: A contemporary Roman Catholic priest was not so fortunate. He was assassinated, in 1992, for speaking out against the Mafia.
You see, when the truth is told, there is always a response, even if it's negative. The priest's life was taken because he spoke out against the forces that hurt God's children.
What do the lives of Panascia and the priest tell us? As St. Paul wrote in Romans 14:8, "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's."
These two men spoke the truth that was given to them. Both gave their lives to God. Neither had the power to select the results of his actions, only to decide how to follow God.
XElsie L. Dursi is the executive director of the Mahoning Valley Association of Churches.