"I don't know if organized criminals have the capability to do something to the Pope. But they are certainly thinking about it."
These words, uttered in a
recent interview by an Italian anti-Mafia prosecutor, don't quite
justify the alarming worldwide headlines they provoked, but at the same
time it would be rash to dismiss them out of hand.
The new Pope represents a
serious threat to some established criminal interests at a critical
moment in the long history of the Mafias' relationship with Catholicism
-- a past marked by both intimacy and violence.
Italy's Mafia problem is
as old as the Italian state.
The three major Mafias -- the Camorra, the
'Ndrangheta, and Cosa Nostra -- originated in the political violence
that led up to Italian unification in 1860.
But only in 1993 did a Pope
explicitly denounce the Mafia. Speaking in Sicily, John Paul II warned
mobsters that God's judgement was at hand.
Cosa Nostra's own verdict on
the Pope's words came two months later, when it planted bombs that
seriously damaged two ancient churches in Rome.
Before that epoch-making
rupture, mafiosi and priests had rubbed along pretty well. The reasons
were political.
The Church loathed the new Italian state because its
unification had robbed the Pontiff of his earthly kingdom, leaving him
only with the Vatican City.
So the Church looked elsewhere for pious
sources of authority.
And Mafia bosses have always been good at dressing
up as devout paladins of order.
The local saint's day,
when a statue is carried through the streets amid prayers and singing,
is the focal point of the calendar in many Italian towns and villages.
All too often, the local capo would place himself at the head of the
parade.
The 'Ndrangheta even used a religious festival as cover for its
annual general meeting.
Since the 1890s, the bosses from across Calabria
have gathered in early September at the Festival of the Madonna of
Polsi.
During the Cold War, the
Church stood firmly in the anti-communist camp. Mafia bosses had every
interest in posing as bulwarks against the red menace because it helped
them cosy up to the Christian Democrats -- the Catholic political party
that held power until 1994.
In 1964, the Cardinal Archbishop of Palermo
denounced any talk of the Mafia as a Communist plot to besmirch Sicily.
In 1982, John Paul II visited Palermo in the middle of an underworld war
that saw hundreds killed, and he did not once use the M-word.
So the Church was, at
best, culpably silent about Italy's permanent Mafia emergency. Over that
time, mafiosi learned to speak religious language and twist it to their
own ends. The evidence is overwhelming: most Italian gangsters are
believers.
During the making of a
recent documentary for Italian television, I visited many of the
fortified bunkers that 'Ndrangheta bosses have built in case they need
to go to ground. Not one was without its crucifixes, its statuettes of
saints, its paintings of the Virgin Mary.
I accompanied the
carabinieri (military police) on a raid on a boss's villa that had been
modelled on the house from the final scene of the movie Scarface. Not
only was there a large effigy of the Madonna of Polsi outside the front
door, but the interior was decorated with various religious trinkets
that competed for space with samurai swords and replica machine guns.
Religion offers the
Mafias a way to bind their organizations together, and gives them the
feeling that they are extorting and killing in the name of a cause more
noble than their own greed. The piety of the majority of Mafia
affiliates is the ultimate proof of the truism that religion can be used
to justify any cause.
So what changed? Why did
John Paul II make his famous denunciation of the Mafia in 1993? There
are two fundamental reasons. First, the end of the Cold War. And second,
in 1992, the clamorous bombing assassinations of Giovanni Falcone and
Paolo Borsellino, Italy's two leading antiMafia prosecutors.
Since then, the Vatican
has entrenched its stance against the mob. An important symbolic gesture
came earlier this year, when Father Pino Puglisi, a Palermo priest
murdered by Cosa Nostra in 1993, was beatified.
Much remains to be done
before the Catholic Church in its entirety can be said to have distanced
itself from the Mafia. Priests are not always keen to dance to the new
tune issuing from St Peter's. Some still preside over the lavish
weddings that weld underworld dynasties together. Religious festivals
are still subject to Mafia infiltration.
Pope Francis is
determined that there will be no turning back. He used the beatification
of Father Pino Puglisi as his cue to repeat John Paul II's denunciation
of the Mafia from twenty years back. But the new Pope is also taking
the battle against crime beyond the realm of words and symbols. The
decisive terrain on which that battle will be fought is finance.
The Church is rich. But
its finances are also bafflingly complex and utterly lacking in
transparency. At the centre of its archipelago of financial institutions
sits the Institute for the Works of Religion (or IOR) -- the Vatican
Bank.
It handles the money of many religious orders. But it also acts
like a little piece of the Caymen Islands on the western side of the
Tiber River, which is what makes it attractive to people who want to
keep their wealth away from the prying eyes of the law.
The IOR has been tainted
with scandal before. In 1982 it was implicated in the fraudulent
bankruptcy of the Banco Ambrosiano, whose president, Roberto "God's
banker" Calvi, was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
Although his murder, or suicide, is still unsolved, it seems highly
likely that he was laundering Cosa Nostra's heroin profits.
Most observers think
that the Church's efforts to reform its finances in the wake of the
Calvi scandal were desultory. Little changed.
But now Pope Francis has
hired external expertise to bring the IOR into line with international
standards of transparency and probity. Just a few days ago he was
particularly frank in condemning Italians who worship "the goddess
bribe", and who give to charity while dodging tax.
Nobody knows how far the
rot extends. Many suspect that the Mafias and sundry other shady cabals
have for years been concealing money under the noses of bishops and
cardinals.
If Francis is really determined to carry through his
clean-up, then likely as not there are plenty of people who would wish
him harm.
So would the Mafia
really murder the Pope?
It is very unlikely.
The Mafias rarely kill
without first carrying out a cost-benefit analysis.
Even a rudimentary
projection of the likely consequences of a hit on the head of the
Catholic Church would show it to be a catastrophic own goal.
A much more
probable scenario is that the Church will carry on reforming its
finances, but at its habitual leaden-footed pace.
Meanwhile, the dirty
money will be spirited away.