Vatican Eyes New Legal Doctrine to Excommunicate Mobsters
Pope Francis has instructed a Vatican commission to develop a new doctrine that calls for excommunicating Catholics for corruption and mafia association. The decision was reached after the Holy See hosted its first-ever conference on fighting corruption and organized crime.
The meeting drew 50 prosecutors, officials of the United Nations (U.N.), bishops and victims of organized crime. Organizers said in a statement Saturday that the time had come to develop a new legal doctrine connected to "the question of excommunication for corruption and mafia association."
"Our effort is to create a mentality, a culture of justice that fights corruption and promotes the common good," Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican's retired ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, said. Excommunication is the most severe penalty imposed by the Church for particularly grave sins. It cuts off the excommunicated from the sacraments by ecclesiastical sentence.
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While Pope Francis has long called for mobsters' excommunication, this is the first time that organized crime and corruption are being considered together as not worthy of forgiveness because they are habitual criminal ways of life, as opposed to a single act of sin.
The pope has denounced corruption in politics, business and even at the Vatican. As the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he wrote the booklet "Curing Corruption," where he made the distinction between sin and corruption, and explored the culture that allows corruption to thrive.
Catholic rituals are intertwined with mafia clans of Italy as well as the drug cartels of Mexico and Columbia. Criminal godfathers and drug lords are known to pray at the altar before committing their crimes and for their huge church donations. Religious processions also usually end up at the homes of mobsters.
Both organized crime and corruption are deeply embedded In Italy where the Vatican is located. Transparency International ranked Italy 60 out of 176 in its corruption perception index last year. The Church has produced anti-mafia campaigners in Italy, some of whom have been killed.
