The Mafia Religion: Considering the Relationship between Catholicism and the Mafia
As Judge Giovanni Falcone once said “Entering the mafia is like converting to a religion. One never stops being a priest. Nor a mafioso,” (Merlino, 1). Since the foundation of the early “mafia” following the unification of Italy in the 19th century, religion has been central to the private formation of collective identity and the public performance of “honor.” In the centuries that have followed, the relationship between Catholicism and the mafia have grown complicated. Though the mafia continues to co-opt religion in their identity formation and performance of honor, their heinous crimes against society have removed the veil of “honor” that allowed their insidious, evil nature to go “unseen” and “unspoken”. As Italian society, the Church, and the Italian judicial system have become increasingly less willing to turn a blind eye to these criminals and criminal organizations, there have been increased calls for “repentance.” While these calls for “repentance,” seek accountability and retribution for sins committed against society, in practice pentimento refers mainly to turning states evidence – as individuals forgo their collective identity and connection to the “higher power,” to avoid actually “repenting,” and paying in full for their sins and crimes. Though few mafiosi’s have yet to actually “repent” in the religious sense, the growing distance between the mafia and the Church in recent years undermines the mafia’s co-option of religion, and in turn, has the potential to chip away at its power.
The mafia has long since coopted religious principles in their formation of collective identity. As Rossella Merlino explains in “The Sacred Oath of a Secret Ritual: Performing Authority and Submission in the Mafia Initiation Ceremony,” religious symbols have had a central role in Mafia initiation ceremonies since the nineteenth century. According to Tommaso Buscetta, one of the most informative pentiti in Mafia history, during the initiation ritual:
“a novice [is] taken to a secluded location, in the presence of three or more other “men of honor,” … The oldest inform[s] him that the goal of “This Thing” [is] to protect the weak and eradicate abuse. After the mafia boss read[s] the fundamental rules of society, the candidate’s finger [is] pierced and blood dropped over the sacred image of a saint, usually Our Lady of the Annunciation. The image is placed in the hand of the novice and set on fire. At this point, the novice, who must endure the burning by passing the sacred picture from one hand to another until it burns out completely, swears his loyalty to the principles of Cosa Nostra. He repeats in a solemn way: “May my flesh be burned like this picture if I betray the oath,” (Merlino, 3).
The mafia’s co-optation of religious values and practices is evident in several steps of this initiation process. First, it is evident through the statement that the goal of Cosa Nostra is to “protect the weak and eradicate abuse.” “Protection,” is central to the principles of Catholicism – as God is understood to be the ultimate “protector” of his followers. Cosa Nostra’s position that they are “protectors,” thus serves to elevate their authority, and encourages followers to rely on them as opposed to other higher powers. The use of religion in this ceremony is made more explicit by the smearing of blood and burning of the sacred image of a saint. Through this process, individuals shed their previous identities. Drawing blood on the image serves to “sacrifice,” the old identity – and the burning of the blood and the image destroys “prior affiliations” and allegiances (Merlino, 4). Initiates are thus “reborn” as mafiosi or “men of honor” – promising they indefinite allegiance to the group by assuring “death in case of betrayal,” (Merlino, 4). It thus becomes evident how, through its initiation process, Cosa Nostra uses Christian principles and symbols to facilitate the “reformation” of an initiate’s identity – as they shed the “individual” identity in favor of the collective identity of the group.
Religion is not only central to the cultivation of collective identity for Cosa Nostra, but in the public performance of “honor.” Performing religion is essential to performing honor, especially in Sicily. As Dicke Explains in Cosa Nostra, “Sicily was the closest thing the world had to the ideal of a wholly Christian society. Being Sicilian and being a believer were inseparable,” (Dickie, 228). Despite being agents of evil in Sicilian society, mafiosi have historically been engaged, if not active, within the religious community. As Merlino notes in “Sicilian Mafia, Patron Saints, and Religious Processions: The Consistent Face of an Ever-Changing Criminal Organization,” “carrying the statue of the saint celebrated during the local procession, as well as playing prominent characters in religious performances, are privileges that mafiosi have always appeared to retain,” (Merlino, 115). Playing these “prominent characters,” gives mafiosi the appearance of being extremely “devout,” and therefore morally good. These ruses of honorability and moral character have historically been successful in helping Mafiosi veil the reality of their evil and sin – as Merlino notes, when one mafiosi Giuseppe Genco Russo was finally sentenced after being acquitted on multiple occasions, he garnered 20,000 signatures on a petition attesting to the fact that he was “a man of moral principles, whose life was an example of probity and rectitude,” (Merlino, 115). Hence, in addition to building collective identity using religion, the mafia has also historically used Christianity to “perform honor,” and, in turn, maintain an appearance of “innocence,” that has allowed them to evade responsibility for their crimes against society.
For a long time, figures of authority within the Catholic church willingly turned a blind eye to mafia activities, which allowed mafiosi’s to continue co-opting religious principles and practices in pursuit of crime and sin. As Dickie notes, Cardinal Ruffini’s, 1964 pastoral epistle, ‘The true face of Sicily,’ was the “ecclesiastical hierarchy’s first official, explicit statement about the mafia,” (Dickie, 229). In this statement, Cardinal Ruffini stated that the mafia was “nothing more than an insignificant minority of criminals,” and that mafia crimes in Sicily were “nothing more serious than the same kind of crime that could be found elsewhere in Italy and around the world,” (Merlino, 111; Dickie, 229). Ruffini’s denial of the actual presence and threat of the mafia in Sicily speaks to the fact that throughout the 20th century, the Church was just as willing as other institutions, such as the State, to turn a blind eye to the crimes committed by this group. This precedent of denial in the face of blatant violence was not unique to Ruffini or lower-ranking members of the clergy, as even in “1982, in the middle of the mattanza, Pope John Paul II had visited Sicily and not once mentioned the word ‘mafia,” (Dicke, 318). The Church’s willingness to openly ignore this group and their violent actions thus speaks to the corruption of both institutions throughout the 20th century. While both the Church and the Mafia are intended to be organizations that “protect,” the symbiotic relationship between the two throughout this period demonstrates how, for a long time, high-ranking religious officials acted largely in self-interest and self-preservation, instead of speaking out against the evil and sins perpetuated by their own “followers.”
The Church’s laidback attitude toward the mafia changed, however, following the 1990’s bombings and murders of anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. High ranking religious officials began taking an explicitly anti-mafia stance, as in 1993 Pope John Paul II visited Sicily and chose the setting of “Agrigento’s Valley of the Temples… to throw away his prepared sermon and launch into a thundering extemporized condemnation of ‘mafia culture… a culture of death, profoundly inhuman, anti-evangelical,” (Dickie, 318). This shift in the attitudes of the Church radically challenged the symbiotic relationship between religion and mafia. Without the churches backing, there was little space for mafiosi’s to corrupt the church in their performance of “honor” and “innocence.” The mafia showed its true colors in its retaliation against Pope John Paul II’s statements – bombing the churches of San Giovanni in Laterano and San Giorgio in Rome, and killing Father Pino Puglisi, “the finest representative of the embattled tradition of local antimafia priests,” (Dickie, 318). Thus, after centuries of cultivating a symbiotic relationship with the Catholic church by co-opting Christian principles for its own benefit, the mafia sabotaged the very thing it could have, and did, depend on to veil its truly evil nature. Despite this retaliation, the Church has strengthened its antimafia stance in recent years – as in 2014, Pope Francis finally made the call to excommunicate the mafia. As he said the mafia is “the adoration of evil and contempt of the common good. Mafiosi are excommunicated,” (Stille, 2). In officially excommunicating the mafia, Pope Francis made it clear that being both mafiosi and catholic is no longer an option – officially severing the ties between Catholicism and the mafia and reclaiming the religious principles and practices the Mafia has long since co-opted in fostering collective identity and performing honor.
Following the terrorism that prompted the Church to sever ties with the mafia, there were many calls for mafiosi to “repent.” One of the most famous of these calls comes from Rosaria Costa, whose husband was killed in one of the bombings, as she spoke at her husband’s funeral and begged for Mafiosos who are “surely not Christian,” to change, so that they can be forgiven. Her call for mafiosos to change and be forgiven is echoed by Pope John Paul the II, as he called “on mafiosi to convert: ‘One day the judgement of God will come!’” (Dicke, 318). These calls for mafiosi to change, convert, and be forgiven have an air of religiosity about them – as Catholic principles of forgiveness advocate that God may exercise mercy on the “day of judgment,” if mafiosi’s realign their affiliation from their criminal organizations to God. Calls for religious and moral awakening, however, have gone largely unanswered – as “repentence” for mafiosos is centered almost entirely on self-interests and self-preservation. For mafiosi, “repenting,” means turning states witness. Mafiosi typically become “pentiti” in order to lessen their sentences from mafia-related crimes. Even though in the long run turning states witness does help in the state’s battle against the mafia, on an individual level, the practice of “pentimento,” achieves the inverse of the actual, religious “repentance,” called upon by victims of the mafia and those who support them – in that it leads to individuals being held less accountable for the sins, and crimes, they are guilty of committing. Even though mafiosi do betray their oath to the mafia, lose their “mafia religion,” forgo their collective identity, and “change” in the process of pentimento they fail to “repent,” in the religious sense, for their sins, as they act in their own self-interest to avoid paying the full price of their crimes.
In conclusion, considering the longwinded relationship between religion and the mafia demonstrates the power of religion in both forming, and “undoing” power structures within Italian society. Throughout history, much of the mafia’s strength, authority, and ruse of “honor” has been achieved by their co-option of catholic principles to create a collective identity, and to perform “devotion” and “innocence.” For a long time, the Church’s willful blindness to the mafia has helped perpetuate these myths and build the veil of honor. That said, the mafia’s increasingly heinous crimes against both society and the Church have forced to religious institutions to take an actively anti-mafia stance in recent years. As disturbing as it is that it took until 2014 for the Church to excommunicate a group that has been harming society for over 200 years, it speaks to how intrinsically tied up the mafia is within Italian society. As we have learned throughout this course, the power of the mafia is insidious, both to those within it and those affected by it in ways we cannot even begin to understand. For that reason, the Church’s move to excommunicate the Mafia and call for “repentance,” after centuries of maintaining that it is possible to be both mafiosi and catholic, is essential to “undoing” the mafia – both internally and externally. As the Church takes an increasingly anti-mafia stance, we can only hope that the “collective identity,” formed in part through religious symbols, is weakened, and that the reality of their insidious nature, veiled by their performance of “devotion,” comes to be seen for what it is. While we have yet to see many mafiosos truly “repenting,” for their crimes and sins, one might hope that in the years to come, Rosaria Costa and Pope John Paul II’s calls might finally be answered.
Works Cited
Dicke, John. Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia. St. Matrin’s Griffin Press, 2004.
Merlino, Rossella. “The Sacred Oath of a Secret Ritual: Performing Authority and Submission in the Mafia Initiation Ceremony.” Forum Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts, 17. University of Edinburgh, 2013.
Merlino, Rosella. “Sicilian Mafia, Patron Saints, and Religious Processions: The Consistent Face of an Ever-Changing Criminal Organization.” California Italian Studies, 1. University of California Berkeley, 2014.
Stille, Alexander. “The Pope Excommunicates the Mafia, Finally.” The New Yorker, 2014.