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Freeing Mary from the mafia

The mafia, camorra and ‘ndrangheta have been present in Italy for at least 200 years and the proceeds of their criminal activities bring in about 300 billion euros every year.

Statue of the Madonna of the Mountain of Polsi (it.wikipedia.org)

To kill the famous Italian magistrate Giovanni Falcone, in Palermo, on May 23, 1993, the mafia used a half-ton of TNT, blowing up a piece of highway as the motorcade of the judge and his escort passed by.

He used to say that “joining the mafia is like embracing a new religion”. But from the point of view of many members of the mafia, the ‘ndrangheta and the camorra, there is no need to abandon Catholicism to belong to such criminal organizations.

Giuseppina Iacopetta was the wife of Fortunato Patania, a boss killed in a ndrangheta feud in Stefanaconi, Calabria, Italy, in 2011, while he was playing cards. Once she was widowed, she replaced her husband as the head of his gang. She ordered her children to avenge their father by making sure that the blood of her rivals “flow in front of the door of my house.” To help them to identify the killers of their father, Giuseppina used to pray to Mary for the “grace” of her husband’s revenge, according to the Deputy Prosecutor of Cosenza (a Calabrian town), Marisa Manzini.

“In her life Giuseppina had seen only violence,” Manzini said, as if trying to justify the woman’s actions. But this episode shows how urgent it really is, to “free Mary from the mafias”, as Pope Francis exhorted last August: “Marian devotion is a religious-cultural heritage to be safeguarded in its original purity by freeing it from superstructures, powers or conditioning that does not correspond to the Gospel criteria of justice, liberty, honesty, and solidarity.”

The quotation comes from a letter, dated August 15, 2020, solemnity of the Assumption of Mary, sent by the Pontiff to Fr. Stefano Cecchin, President of the Pontifical International Marian Academy. The occasion was the launch—scheduled on September 18 in Rome—of a “Department of Analysis and Study of Criminal and Mafia-related Phenomena”, inside this Academy.

The department began its activity with two online conferences, December 10 (feast of Our Lady of Loreto) and December 17, gathering theologians and mariologists, along with judges, criminologists, lawyers, police officers, and more. They focused above all on the ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, since it is undoubtedly the most influential and dangerous today, compared to the Sicilian mafia and the Neapolitan camorra.

Why is this question relevant to the Catholic Church? The ‘ndrangheta “has been able to take root all over the world. Its strength lies in maintaining a strong bond with the top management of the organization, who are in Calabria, and preserving its rites and traditions everywhere,” Salvatore Dolce explained. According to his experience as a magistrate of the Italian Anti-Mafia Directorate, the ‘ndrangheta rites follow everywhere the same ritual, in Calabria as in Switzerland, Germany, Australia or Canada, taking many symbols and contents from Catholicism, Christian liturgy and popular devotion.

On August 15, 2007, in Duisburg, Germany, outside an Italian pizzeria, six “’ndranghetisti” (men of a ‘ndrangheta gang or family) were killed at night with 70 gunshots by men of a rival family. The oldest victim was the restaurant owner. In the pocket of a boy, another victim just eighteen years old, policemen found a burnt holy card of St. Michael the Archangel. “It is very likely that they had just celebrated an affiliation rite, also given that the German police found holy cards and statues of St. Michael the Archangel inside the restaurant,” Deputy Prosecutor Manzini reported at the conference.

The description of an affiliation rite to the ‘ndrangheta is offered by the testimony of a former member. “They made a cross-shaped cut on my thumb, above the nail, to make three drops of blood fall on a plate. Then, to heal the wound, they burned half of a St. Michael the Archangel holy card and put the ashes on the cut.”

These rituals, Manzini added, are “the chain between past and present of the ndrangheta. Saints are often invoked during affiliation ceremonies, called ‘baptisms’, as well as during subsequent rites of passage. The ‘ndranghetista who becomes a ‘vangelista’ [from the Italian for Gospel, “Vangelo”] swears fidelity keeping his hand on the Gospel.’

During several seizures of ‘ndrangheta gang property, the police have often found handwritten sheets with questions and answers of the initiation rites. Very often there is the reference to the legend of three Spanish knights who lived around 1400, Osso, Mastrosso and Carcagnosso. They were forced to flee Spain after avenging the honor of their sister, violated by an arrogant lord. After hiding for 29 years in Favignana, a small island close to western Sicily, Osso founded the mafia in Sicily, Mastrosso founded the ‘ndrangheta in Calabria, and Carcagnosso the camorra in Naples.

This is just legend, but it serves to give new affiliates the idea of entering a very exclusive system of power. “There are guys willing to kill, indeed, to become a ‘ndrangheta member,” Manzini said, while the children of the most prominent ‘ndrangheta families are affiliated by “right of blood”.

Giuseppina Pesce was the wife of a boss. She decided to start collaborating with the investigators “to try to give a different destiny to my children. When my son said that he wanted to become a carabiniere [Italian policeman], his uncle beat him, then promised him that he would give him a gun.” Giuseppina’s repentance dates back to 10 years ago, but she still lives far from Calabria in a secret location. No need to say, in fact, that every mafia member must swear absolute loyalty when he joins a clan. “This means that you cannot avoid any request to carry out criminal actions. The mafia is a road from which it is not possible to go back: either you end up in jail or lying dead somewhere,” Renato Nitti, prosecutor of the Republic of Trani, summed up bluntly.

Another famous ‘ndrangheta tradition, until a few years ago, was a pilgrimage to a famous sanctuary in Polsi, a small mountain village in Calabria, for the feast of “Our Lady of the Mountain”, on September 2. The ‘ndrangheta leaders arrived from all over Calabria, Italy and abroad, to mingle with the pilgrims and to hold meetings to discuss criminal strategies and alliances, assigned degrees , and resolved disputes. “The house of Nicolino Grande Aracri, head of one of the most powerful clans, was full of statues and holy cards of St. Michael the Archangel and Our Lady of Polsi”, Deputy Prosecutor Manzini added again.

As reported by the criminologist Fabio Iadeluca, the mafia, camorra and ‘ndrangheta have been present in Italy for at least 200 years. The proceeds of their criminal activities bring in about 300 billion euros every year. And the economic crisis caused by the pandemic became a great opportunity for them: “there are thousands of entrepreneurs in difficulty to whom the mafias are ready to lend cash without asking for all the legal guarantees the banks ask for. But then the mafias also want their own advantage.”

In short, freeing Our Lady (and not only her) from the connection of the mafia is even more urgent today. So “we want the department to be a place to share experiences, collect and study documentation,” Father Stefano Cecchin says. “When we talk about freeing Mary from the mafias we mean freeing the human person from all forms of slavery. Even religion can be a form of slavery, when someone uses religion to manipulate the consciences of others.”

The next event is announced for May 13, the feast of Our Lady of Fatima: an annual conference to present the first fruits of the department’s work, almost a year after its creation.


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About Paolo Fucili 8 Articles
Paolo Fucili is a journalist writing from Italy.

10 Comments

  1. After breathing the last breath, EACH of us will be asked that most terrible of questions – “What have you done with your life?”

    • The title of this article is misleading. There is nothing new about the fact that people within the southern Italian crime organizations simply have a Catholic background. This has nothing to do with Islam. The environment from which these people come is fundamentally Catholic by definition. Areas such as Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicily. These people come from the same environment as the common people around them. They don’t abuse this. But use it to their advantage. Whether you agree with this or not. This sentiment is also there at Narcos Cartels in Mexico. It is no secret that in many processions in southern Italy money comes from these organizations whose graves are lined with Mary and Saints. Bernardo Provenzano who was finally caught in 2006 after being missing for 40 years. In his hiding place was surrounded by Santini’s holy images and bibles. For Italian Americans, first delve into where these people are from. It’s very strange that these people are Catholic in what they do. But it is. So don’t pretend it’s new. It’s been there from the start.

  2. The theory exists that the Mafia derives from Islam which controlled Sicily for more than 200 years in the Middle Ages until it was taken by the Normans. Muhammad would have been the “capo di tutti capi” and, of course, he had his hitmen to carry out his orders when it came to killing people who weren’t willing to surrender to him, such as a female poet who wrote a sarcastic poem against him. I would assume that there are similarities between ISIS or Al-Qaeda and the Mafia. This, however, is not a deviation from the real religion as it is in the case of the Mafia using Catholicism for its purposes. It is enough to read the Quran, the Hadiths and the Life of Muhammad to realize that Islam seems to be a religion at the service of political domination of the “keffir” (non believer). According to the official life of Muhammad, he became very rich thanks to his extortion and slave trade. Of course, there are many differences and it may well be that the mafiosios didn’t really know anything about Islam, but both seem to have applied some of the same methods.

  3. And unfortunately there are and were clergy who provided spiritual comfort to the Mob. Probably because the Mob had dirt on them.

  4. Thank you so much for this wonderful summary of the two online PAMI conferences of December 10 and 17. I was able to listen in on the December 10th conference, and I joined in at the end of the December 17th conference to hear the fine insights of Padre Gian Matteo Roggio. The details provided by dott.ssa Marisa Manzini were the most detailed and disturbing. I also found the one comment of Dr. Nader Akkad, the Imam of Trieste, quite interesting. As I recall he said that just as Mary must be liberated from the Mafia so Islam must be liberated from the terrorists. Grazie ancora per questo articolo.

  5. Blood feud exists in different cultures in different ways.

    For the Italian mafia it is a system of honor and power but also heroism. This sense of glory makes it very intoxicating and adds to the entrenchment. Pope Francis wanted to “free” the BVM from this “romantic” corruption and so far we do not know what has been achieved by his efforts on it. Whatever has come of it, some of the devotion could be true yet he has not addressed to them how it ends in tragedy and will end in tragedy for many. Nor has he said in what ways it would be sinful. By making to “free the BVM” he could signal to the relatives and the general society to “come out” of the mafia rings, yes; but I wonder if this is the ONLY efficacious apostolate. Perhaps though at least one of them has fled? Would such a thing appeal to the culture at large even?

    Apart from the particular settlement code of the mafia, vengeance and survival are in play in many other segments of economy and society and the mafia could simply understand themselves as more virtuous as well as more effective. The code bears out on what is so “distinguished”.

    I wonder: Where our Lady is she likely does not need the help of the Holy Father to free her from anything and therefore, has he given this part of it sufficient consideration? We want to love the Holy Father but he does what appears unintelligible and we do not hear the outcome. What are we to suppose? We can’t suppose anything, we are too busy on the cliff-hanger edge.

    If you don’t take the time to comprehend a problem properly you never get at it as you could and must. For example, intra-Ukraine feuding of VERY DEEP HISTORY AND EMOTIVE POWER is at the root of the Ukraine problem, it is a problem inside Ukraine. When it began manifesting the Holy Father never addressed it AT ALL. Eventually Russia was forced to take the just initiative to defend the innocent in the east of Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the eastern Ukrainians were responsible for the provocation nor for the conflagration; yet the Holy Father wants to have it established as that the Russians are waging a blameworthy aggressive war on the hateful genocidal orders of Mr. Putin.

    Orthodox and Catholic Ukraine clergy and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate have been fueling the “frenzy of settlement at any cost” artifices and the alliances with queer war-mongers in the west; but the Holy Father has not called them into question. What the sense of it is only they grasp it. So what is that. The BVM will give them “justice and peace from heaven” because it is in her power to do it?

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