Sunday, June 22, 2014

Pope Francis Excommunicates the Italian Mafia: How Tight is Christianity?

As though a lamb going into a lion’s den, Pope Francis journeyed to Sibari in southern Italy on the Summer Solstice of 2014 to castigate the Italian mafia, and more specifically the Ndrangheta crime group, as an example of “the adoration of evil.”  He added that “(t)hose who in their lives follow this path of evil, as mafiosi do, are not in communion with God. They are excommunicated.”[1] Presumably so too are the mafia families in other European states, and in the American states as well. As laudable as such excommunicating is, the fact that such murderous thugs have regarded themselves as Catholics, and, more generally as Christian, points to a more profound need for reform within the religion itself. In this essay, I draw on The Godfather saga to present this argument.





[1] Reuters, “Pope Excommunicates Mafiosi,” The Huffington Post, June 21, 2014.