English articles
Porti, traffici illeciti e affari mafiosi
Marco AntonelliAssegnista di ricerca in Scienze politiche alla Scuola Normale Superiore
30 aprile 2025
Pope Francis, the Pontiff who came 'from the end of the world', who did not know the mafias, is certainly the one who has intervened most concretely and effectively on the mafias. Jorge Mario Bergoglio acted with clear and definitive gestures and words, but also with the simplicity and humility of those who don’t know much and want to learn and then intervene. He did this by being on the side of the victims, of those who have suffered and are suffering, without ever closing the door on the perpetrators.
Life imprisonment, the slap of remorse
The first gesture, the first words came just a year after his election. It is 2014, and in preparation for the 19th edition of the Day of Memory and Commitment in Remembrance of Innocent Victims of the Mafia, to be held in Latina, Don Luigi Ciotti, founder and president of the Italian antimafia association called Libera, met him privately. "I asked him if he felt up to meeting a thousand family members of mafia victims. He immediately told me 'I'm coming'. And then his honesty, his humility, when he told me that he knew little about the mafia, 'send me some notes...'. I prepared them. And he then said some wonderful words”. Bergoglio, an Argentinean cardinal, was well aware of the corruption unfortunately so at home in his country. And he often spoke about it in his speeches. Some have become famous. In Scampia he said that "a Christian who lets corruption 'spit' inside him", adding that "corruption is a temptation, a slide towards easy business, towards delinquency". And that bribes are the “dirty bread” brought “home to one's children”.
Of the mafias, as he admitted to Don Luigi, he knew very little but learnt immediately, from that 20 March 2014, when in the Roman church of San Gregorio VII he met the families of clan victims. He made two gestures that spoke for themselves: he entered the church, hand in hand with don Luigi, a priest that for so long was criticised even in the Church and kept on the sidelines. He would remember him nine years later when he met the women and children of the Liberi di scegliere (Free to Choose) project, which protects women and minors who decide to move away from criminal families. "A cousin of mine wrote to me 'Be careful with bad company. It's not clean grain'. But it's not true'.
From crime to community: the social reuse of confiscated assets in Italy, Spain and Romania
"I feel that I cannot finish without saying a word to the great absentees, today, the absent protagonists: the men and women mafiosi. Please change your lives, convert, stop, stop doing evil! And we pray for you"Pope Francis
The relatives of mafia victims know this episode well, as they saw him wearing the stole of Don Peppe Diana, the parish priest of Casal di Principe killed by the Camorra on 19 March 1994, and listening to the interminable list of hundreds of names of innocent victims, his head bowed, as if to burden himself with all that pain. At the end he thanked the relatives 'for your testimony, because you did not close yourselves down'.
Then the surprise, the words that no one expected. "I feel that I cannot finish without saying a word to the great absentees, today, the absent protagonists: the men and women mafiosi. Please change your lives, convert, stop, stop doing evil! And we pray for you". Then he added words that to many people brought to mind those of Paul VI to the Red Brigades (a far-left terrorist organisation) during the kidnapping of Aldo Moro: 'Convert, I ask on my knees; it is for your own good. This life you are living now, it will not give you pleasure, it will not give you joy, it will not give you happiness. The power, the money that you have now from so many dirty deals, from so many mafia crimes, is blood money, it is blood power, and you will not be able to take it into the next life. Convert, there is still time, not to end up in hell. That is what awaits you if you continue on this path. You have had a father and a mother: think of them. Weep a little and convert".
"The 'ndrangheta is this: adoration of evil and contempt for the common good. This evil must be fought, it must be driven away! It must be said no! Those who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mobsters are, are not in communion with God: they are excommunicated!"Pope Francis
This is how Pope Francis began his dialogue with the mobsters, a direct talk, made of clarity. A dialogue that did not stop. Just three months later, on 21 June, in Calabria, in the Piana di Sibari, his homily in front of 200,000 people was a further step forward. A few hours earlier, he had met the family of little Cocò Campolongo, a three years old kid killed and then burnt on 16 January in Cassano all'Jonio, together with his grandfather and hiw partner. After that meeting, he spoke his shutting remarks: "The 'ndrangheta is this: adoration of evil and contempt for the common good. This evil must be fought, it must be driven away! It must be said no! Those who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mobsters are, are not in communion with God: they are excommunicated!".
The Italian supreme court gives broader benefits to the families of innocent victims of mafias
"To the mafiosi I say: change, brothers and sisters! Stop thinking of yourselves and your money. Convert to the true God of Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters! I say to you, mafiosi: if you do not do this, your very lives will be lost and it will be the worst of defeats”
Pope Francis translated his words into deeds and into pastoral action. So he set up a working group on corruption, mafias and excommunication, made up of magistrates, theologians, bishops, priests in the front line, to understand how to translate his words into norms, because he realises that these norms do not exist and mafias must be answered with concrete facts. In Bergoglio's words, justice and mercy hold hands. On 9 May 2021, on the occasion of the beatification of Judge Rosario Livatino, killed by the stidda (a Sicilian organised crime group) on 21 September 1990, he said: “In his service to the community as an upright judge, who never allowed himself to be corrupted, he strove to judge not to condemn but to redeem”. He also spoke on 15 September 2018 in Palermo, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the death of Don Pino Puglisi, the parish priest of Brancaccio killed by Cosa Nostra on 15 September 1993: “He who is mafioso does not live as a Christian, because he blasphemes with his life the name of God-love”. And again he directly addressed the men and women of the Mafia. "To the mafiosi I say: change, brothers and sisters! Stop thinking of yourselves and your money. Convert to the true God of Jesus Christ, dear brothers and sisters! I say to you, mafiosi: if you do not do this, your very lives will be lost and it will be the worst of defeats”.
He called them 'brothers and sisters', he did not lock the door, he invited them, he awaited them. But he also indicated how to fight the mafias, denouncing both the fake anti-mafia movements, from pundits, and the facade respectability, which does not get its hands dirty. "Don Pino taught this: he did not live to be seen, he did not live by anti-mafia appeals, nor was he content to do no wrong, but sowed good, so much good. His seemed to be a losing logic, while the logic of the wallet seemed to be winning. But Father Pino was right: the logic of the money-god is always a loser...Those who love, on the other hand, rediscover themselves and discover how beautiful it is to help, how beautiful it is to serve; they find joy inside and a smile outside”.
The Italian antimafia association Libera sheds light on crime in ports: "Politics still timid"
"You were born and raised in contexts polluted by mafia crime, and you have decided to get out of it. I bless this choice of yours, and I encourage you to move forward. I imagine that there are moments of fear, of bewilderment, it is normal. In these moments, think of the Lord Jesus who walks beside you. You are not alone, keep fighting”Pope Francis
It is the smile with which Pope Francis on 30 October 2023 welcomed several dozen women and children from Mafia families to the Vatican. They are the mothers who have chosen to change and “come out of contexts polluted by mafia crime”, as the Pope defined them. Protagonists, with their children, of the project Liberi di scegliere (Free to choose), born from the collaboration between the Juvenile Court of Reggio Calabria, Libera and the Italian Episcopal Conference, which supports it financially. Once again, Don Ciotti requested the meeting and Francesco immediately replied 'yes'. "You were born and raised in contexts polluted by mafia crime, and you have decided to get out of it. I bless this choice of yours, and I encourage you to move forward. I imagine that there are moments of fear, of bewilderment, it is normal. In these moments, think of the Lord Jesus who walks beside you. You are not alone, keep fighting”, said Pope Francis.
There is a close connection with his first meeting nine years earlier with the families of Mafia victims. Then he addressed the men and women of the Mafia. The latter day, some of them – those women with their children – stood before him as if they had taken up that appeal of his. "You know that among Jesus’s disciples there were also some women. Those women - like the men - were not perfect people, they were not 'angelic': they were women tried by life, sometimes 'infected' by evil. They were women whom Jesus took in with compassion with tenderness and healed them. Let us think of the Magdalene. With Him they walked the path of liberation. It is like this: one becomes free not by magic, but by walking with the Lord, sharing his steps, his path, which necessarily passes through the cross and leads to resurrection".
That open door towards a rebirth, such as those that represent property confiscated from the mafia and reused for social purposes. A founding theme of Libera, which sees many realities committed in the territories. Pope Francis invited them to the Vatican on 19 September 2024. It was the first time: magistrates, jurists, bishops, social workers united in a conference organised by Libera and the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Words of hope and encouragement still came from the Pope. "Recovery of property should not be limited to a security policy objective, but be inspired by the repair and reconstruction of the common good.
Thus, in the face of organised crime which "in its brutality, attacks the common good, attacks millions of men and women who have the right to live their lives and raise their children with dignity and free from the hunger and fear of violence, oppression or injustice", we must "pay attention to the urgency of recovering the good of all people, men and women, the common good, where everyone counts and no one is discarded, where the common project, at the service of human dignity, exceeds the individual sum of each. Without losing sight of the victims and the community, considering law and justice as a practice whose mission is to build a better world”.
Recovering the good of all people, words that came back to my mind as I read the message of Francesco (fictitious name), a collaborator of justice (a former criminal who decided to help the investigators). He reminds me, moved, of the interview he gave him after Pope Francis' words at the meeting with the families of mafia victims. "I go to schools to tell my life story, to explain that we too can change, we can convert as Pope Francis has asked," he told me then. The 'former boss' wrote me those words the day of pope Francis’ death, confirming the results of that dialogue opened eleven years ago.
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