The mafia likes the Church. But which Church? The one that can act as a “stage”, to be used to appear. An external Church, to show off its power. And thus ensure consent. Because, it is good to remember, without consent it would not be a mafia. It’s not just violence and abuse. External church, not religiosity, not spirituality. An empty church. All for herself. This is how the mafia uses, manages and corrupts the patron saint’s festivals and processions. He wants the saints to bow to his power. It transforms events of popular piety into “own affairs”, “cosa nostra”. But it also transforms personal, family moments of intimate relationship with God into a display of power. So the boss Tommaso Lo Presti, released from prison at the end of 2023 after 12 years, and his wife Teresa Marino, also a criminal for the mafia, and who ended up in prison as a cashier for the Porta Nuova clan, wanted to lavishly celebrate their birthday in church 25th of marriage. They chose a doubly sacred place for Palermo, Sicilians and Italians, the church of San Domenico, the pantheon of Palermo, where Giovanni Falcone is also buried. A double offense. The rector explained in a note that he did not know who they were. We believe him. But no one recommended it? Did he warn him? He also added that “the mafiosi must not believe that they can access the sacraments with any sort of subterfuge: no salvation is possible outside of a perspective of repentance and conversion”. And as for the offer made by the couple, he specified that he will keep it and allocate it “to initiatives in support of the fight against the mafia”. That money, however, stinks of evil, pain, violence.
A few years ago in another territory, no less delicate than Palermo like Calabria, when the bishop of Locri-Gerace, Don Franco Oliva, learned that the restoration of a parish had been paid for with the offer of an unsavory character, he demanded that that money be returned, and with two bank transfers from the Diocese, quoting the words of Pope Francis, “The People of God, that is, the Church, does not need dirty money”, so that it was documented which side the Church is on. Yes, because the mafia does not love this Church which reiterates the irreconcilability between the mafia and the Gospel. As the archbishop of Palermo, Corrado Lorefice, reiterates almost daily. And the mafia, which loves the Church it would like, silent and “useful”, instead hates the true Church. And he continues to hit her. It is the “outgoing Church” of Pope Francis, it is the Church of Father Pino Puglisi, who spoke directly to the mafiosi, who proclaimed the Gospel with facts, who saved young people from criminal flattery, who united Heaven and Earth, asking for schools for Brancaccio , sports, work. The mafia feared Don Pino and killed him. But she continues to fear his works and his memory. Thus the photographic exhibition in the Beato Padre Pino Puglisi square was damaged, the place where he was killed in 1993. Yet another act against the Padre Nostro Centre.
Because memory does not bend, it becomes commitment and even after death it bears good fruit. It is what the Church does that the mafia fears, hates, and continues to attack. “Those who have these paths of evil in their lives, the mafiosi, are not in communion with God, they are excommunicated,” Pope Francis said almost ten years ago, on 21 June 2014, in the great Sibari Plain. Clear words from a Church not for the use and consumption of the mafiosi.
