Pappalardo spoke out against the Mafia from the 1980s. At the funeral of Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa in 1982, who had been murdered along with his wife in Palermo, he criticised the Italian political establishment for failing to guarantee security in Sicily.[5] He became more explicit in the early 1990s, after other anti-Mafia lawyers, policemen and priests had been murdered. At the funeral of Giovanni Falcone in 1992, who was also murdered along with his wife near Palermo, he described the murderers as part of a "synagogue of Satan", leading to criticism from Italian Jews. He later apologised, having meant the word synagogue in its "old sense, as a gathering place". In 1993, at the funeral of murdered priest Pino Puglisi, he called for the people of Sicily to rise up against the Mafia. He was awarded the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Italian Republic by Italian PresidentSandro Pertini.
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