Pope Francis is calling for devotion to the Virgin Mary to be liberated from association with criminal groups, with the figure of Mary often used in Mafia rituals or even to honour gang bosses.
In a letter to the Pontifical International Marian Academy, the Pope called on them to “free the figure of the Madonna from the influence of criminal organisations” and praised the academy for creating a department to study criminal and mafia phenomena.
Devotion to Mary, Francis added in the letter sent on the Feast of the Assumption, needs to be removed from the “superstructures, powers or conditioning that does not correspond to the Gospel criteria of justice, liberty and honesty.”
In Italy, particularly in the south, statues of the Blessed Virgin are forced to stop and bow before the houses of mob bosses during processions, in what is known as the “inchino.”
Mafia groups have also used Marian shrines for meetings and in Reggio Calabria a boss from the ’Ndrangheta crime group was “sworn in” under an image of the Virgin Mary.
The Mafia has three main syndicates: the Cosa Nostra in Sicily, the Camorra in Naples, and the ’Ndrangheta in Calabria, now one of the richest and most powerful criminal organisations in the world.
During a visit to Calabria in 2014, Francis announced that the Mafia were “excommunicated” while in 2018, while in Sicily, he denounced the mafia's "blasphemous existence" during a visit to honour Blessed Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi, a priest murdered by the mob in 1993.
The Marian Academy is organising a conference in September to draw up guidelines for the new department. The conference will include theologians, Mariologists, judges, criminologists, lawyers, police officers, and civic leaders.
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