Overview

Masses celebrated in the hideouts of powerful bosses. Priests who testify on behalf of unrepentant criminals, calling them "gentlemen" and "friends." Mafia families using religious processions to extort, in the form of offerings, money from shopkeepers. Mafia-financed patronal festivals. Now the situation seems to have changed. For the first time in the history of the Church, a Pope, Francis, has excommunicated mafiosi: "Those who in their lives have this path of evil, the mafiosi, are not in communion with God: they are excommunicated."