The gesture was all the more awkward for the Vatican because it came a month after Pope Francis visited Calabria – the heartland of the powerful ’Ndrangheta mafia – and launched a scathing attack on organised crime, announcing that all mafiosi were excommunicated from the Church, condemning them to hell in the afterlife.  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 Francesco Milito, who presides over a diocese that includes the town of Oppido Mamertina, decreed that those chosen to carry a statue of the Madonna “should be chosen, under the direct responsibility of the parish, from among the faithful who regularly go to Sunday Mass and who are of proven Christian faith”.  The exact route to be taken by processions should be vetted by Church authorities, the bishop added. “We are determined to claim back, and indeed purify, this form of popular piety, which is particularly connected to during Holy Week.”  Bishop Luigi Renzo, of the diocese of Mileto-Tropea-Nicotera, also in Calabria, said there needed to be “concrete signs of a break with certain improper events of the past”. Statues and relics should only be carried by “people known to the parish who are truly committed to walking the path of faith”.  He banned the involvement of anyone “who is on trial for mafia association or who has a conviction, unless they have publicly repented and expressed regret”.  Processions carrying “sacred images” could stop outside hospices or old people’s homes in order to bless them, but must not pause anywhere else along the route, he said.  Anti-mafia police launched an investigation into the procession in Oppido Mamertina last summer, in which people carrying a statue of the Madonna bent down to make the effigy “bow” to the home of the mafia boss.  The tribute was condemned by Angelino Alfano, the interior minister, as “deplorable and disgusting”.  The Catholic Church has long had an ambivalent relationship with organised crime in Italy. Priests in areas of southern Italy under the sway of mafia groups have turned a blind eye to their criminal activities, while many mafia gangsters claim to be God-fearing Catholics, invoking saints in their secret initiation ceremonies.
The Catholic Church bans Easter Week religious processions from paying tribute to mafia dons, anxious to avoid the embarrassment of similar incidents in the past