(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 21 - President Sergio Mattarella on Tuesday paid tribute to an anti-mafia priest gunned down by one of the most powerful clans in the Neapolitan Camorra mafia 19 years ago.
    Done Peppe Diana was gunned down by the Casalesi clan at the age of 35 in Casal di Principe near Caserta on March 19, 1994.
    He was murdered by the bloody clan, whose death threats have more recently forced anti-mafia Gomorra writer Roberto Saviano into police protection, for standing up to the Naples Mob and continuing to denounce them in his sermons.
    Paying homage to Father Diana on Italy's Day of Memory and Commitment in Remembrance of Mafia Victims, Mattarella told a group of local young people in Casal di Principe, after visiting the late priest's grave, that they should be proud of the way the town has largely succeeded in freeing itself of the Casalesis' baleful influence after a series of criminal trials and political reforms.
    "Dear girls and boys, you must be proud of being born in this land, which has been able to carry out this true, great, renaissance", said Mattarella.
    "You must feel the pride of being co-citizens of Don Diana. You must refuse, starting in the school benches, the subjugation, violence, prevarication and bullying that are a soup cultivating the mafia mentality.
    "Always remember that you are the generation of hope, the one to which Father Diana symbolically passed on the baton of lawfulness". (ANSA).