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“You shouldn’t deny prayers to anyone, but I can’t say I am sorry,” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said on Monday, according to Reuters.
He had undergone surgery for his colon cancer in 2020 and 2022, under a fake identity. His condition had worsened in recent months, leaving him in a coma last Friday.
Denaro had been arrested by Italian police in January, after 30 years on the run. Prior to standing trial, prosecutors alleged that Denaro was involved in two 1992 bombings that killed anti-mafia Italian officials, and that he was the boss of Cosa Nostra.
Denaro had also received a sentence due to his role in the torture, kidnapping and murder of a mafia informant’s 12-year-old son. Giuseppe Di Matteo, the boy, was killed two years after he was abducted, and was strangled and dissolved in acid in 1996.
Prior to his eventual arrest, Denaro spent much of the time in hiding in a town in Sicily near his hometown, communicating through small paper notes carried by messengers, per Reuters.
“I followed an old Jewish saying, ‘If you want to hide a tree, plant it in a forest,” Messina Denaro told judges.
Other Italian officials maintained a similarly restrained tone to Salvini in public comments.
“You always need to respect death, because unlike mafiosi, we respect life until death,” Enzo Alfano, the mayor of Castelvetrano, Denaro’s hometown in Sicily, said, per Reuters. “But we cannot forget who Messina Denaro was, a murderer, a mass murderer who hurt his land.”
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