Rome: Italian bishops have ordered religious processions in the south of the country to break with the tradition of saluting the homes of mafia dons during Easter Week.
The Catholic Church has been embarrassed in the past after processions, which involve the believers carrying statues of the Madonna or other relics, stopped in front of the houses or apartments of well-known mafia criminals, dipping the religious object in a sign of respect.
The most recent high-profile case took place last July, when a procession in Oppido Mamertina, Calabria, made a detour and performed a “salute” beneath a flat where Giuseppe Mazzagatti, 82, a mob boss, was serving a life sentence under house arrest.
The gesture was all the more awkward for the Vatican because it came a month after Pope Francis visited Calabria, the heartland of the ‘Ndrangheta mafia, and announced that all mafiosi were excommunicated from the Church.
As Holy Week gets under way, bishops said local church committees should be on their guard against the processions being infiltrated by mafia sympathisers who might try to pay tribute to convicted or suspected gangsters.
Bishop Luigi Renzo, of the diocese of Mileto-Tropea-Nicotera, in Calabria, said processions carrying “sacred images” could stop outside hospices or old people’s homes to bless them, but must not pause anywhere else.
