Bernardino Verro (3 July 1866 – 3 November 1915) was an Italian socialist politician and a leader of the Fasci Siciliani movement. He became the first socialist Mayor of Corleone in 1914, and he was assassinated by the Mafia a year later.
Biography[]
Bernardino Verro was born in Corleone, Sicily in 1866. He formed the Fasci Siciliani chapter in Corleone in 1892, becoming its president at the age of 26. Corleone became the center of the peasant movement and strike wave in 1893 thanks to Verro's enthusiasm and his alliance with the local Mafia; he was initiated into the Fratuzzi clan, but, when the Mafia worked to boycott the strikes, Verro broke from the Mafia and became its most bitter enemy. He was imprisoned from 1894 to 1896, after which he established a consumer cooperative in Corleone. From 1903 to 1906, he went into exile in France and Tunisia. In 1910, he decried the alliance between Corleone's Mafia and Catholics, and he survived a shooting attempt that same year. In 1914, he was elected Mayor, while the PSI won 24 of the 30 seats on Corleone's city council. In 1915, he was killed by eleven gunshots fired by a Mafia hitman.