“Let us pray for all the victims of mafias; let us ask for the strength to go forward, to continue to fight against corruption,” was Pope Francis’ tweet, published only in Italian on July 19, 2017, for the 25th anniversary of the murder of the anti-mafia Judge Paolo Borsellino.
On July 19, 1992, less than two months after the murder of Giovanni Falcone, the 52-year-old judge was the victim of an “attack on Via d’Amelio” along with the five policemen charged with his protection. The Pope has often raised his voice against the mafias, as he did during his visit to Cassano all’Jonio, in the province of Cosenza in Calabria in June 2014: while there he denounced the misdeeds of the “N’Drangheta,” Calabrian mafia, affirming that those who engage in organized crime do not adore God but adore evil,” “they are not in communion with God , they are excommunicated.”
The Pope regularly denounces the corruption in the Church as well as in society. Recently, signing the Preface of Cardinal Turkson’s book “Corruption: Overcome Corruption in the Church and in Society,” which came out last June, he referred to corruption as “the worst of social wounds,” “a form of blasphemy,” and a “cancer.”
At the end of the first “International Debate on Corruption,” organized in the Vatican by the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development, on June 15, 2017, the participants resolved to reflect further on the question of excommunication for corruption.
