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One of Italy’s best known anti-mob prosecutors is warning the Mafia is considering Pope Francis as a target.
Nicola Gratteri says the Mafia is upset by the Pope’s efforts to make the Church more financially transparent.
For years the Mafia has laundered money and made investments, taking advantage of the connivance of the Church, he said.
Gratteri’s comments were made against a backdrop of Pope Francis, Monday, again putting clerics and crime bosses on notice.
In a fiery sermon against corruption, the pope said christians who lead a “double life” by giving money to the Church while getting it from nefarious means should be punished.
Reinforcing his comment the pontiff used Luke 17:2, “Jesus says: It would be better for him if a millstone were put around his neck and he be thrown into the sea.”
Earlier in the year, May, during an address in St Peter’s Square in Rome, the pope strongly criticised Italy’s four mafia organisations for “exploiting and enslaving people”, and called on gangsters to repent.
“I think of all the pain of men, women and even children who are exploited by many mafias,” Pope Francis told thousands of people during his weekly address.
“They are forced to do work that makes them slaves, like prostitution. Behind all this slavery there are mafias.”
Crime-stopper Nicola Gratteri, who for 25 years has lived the south Italy region of Calabria, where the Mafia is most active, lives his life under police protection.
“Those who have up until now profited from the power and wealth deriving from the Church are now nervous, agitated. The Pope is dismantling centres of economic power in the Vatican”, he said.
“I don’t know if organised crime is in a position to do something, but certainly they are thinking about it. It could be dangerous. If the godfathers can trip him up, they would not hesitate to do so,” he told Il Fatto Quotidiano, an Italian daily.
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