Scottish Catholic Observer

The Holy Father also met with the father of a boy slain earlier this year in a Mafia killing.

The Pope (above), speaking at a Mass during his day trip to Italy’s Calabria region last Saturday, issued one of the strongest attacks on organised crime since the late Pope St John Paul II lambasted the Sicilian Mafia in 1993.

“Those who in their lives follow this path of evil, as Mafiosi do, are not in communion with God, they are excommunicated,” Pope Francis said in impromptu comments at the Mass before tens of thousands of people.

He told the crowd at the outdoor Mass in Sibari: “This evil must be fought against, it must be pushed aside. We must say no to it.

“When adoration of the Lord is substituted by adoration of money, the road to sin opens to personal interest… When one does not adore the Lord, one becomes an adorer of evil, like those who live by dishonesty and violence.

“Your land, which so beautiful, knows the signs of the consequences of this sin. The ‘Ndrangheta (Calabrian mafia) is this: adoration of evil and contempt of the common good. This evil must be fought, must be expelled. It must be told no.”

Those who have chosen the ‘evil road, such as the mobsters’ are ‘not in communion with God.’ They are ‘excommunicated,’ he said.

His homily, preached on the feast of the Corpus Christi focused on the importance of adoring God alone.

“And, for this faith, we renounce Satan and all of his temptations; we renounce the idols of money, vanity, pride and power,” the Pope emphasised. ‘We, Christians, do not want to adore anything or anyone in this world except Jesus Christ, who is present in the Holy Eucharist.”

Christians adore God ‘who is love’ and who ‘in Jesus Christ has given Himself for us, who has offered himself on the cross for the expiation of our sins and by the power of this love is risen and lives in the Church.’

The Holy Father urged the congregation to ‘witness to concrete fraternal solidarity in families, parishes, and ecclesial movements.’

“The Lord Jesus does not cease to raise up gestures of charity in His people who are journeying!” he exclaimed. “If you adore Christ and walk behind Him and with Him, your diocesan church and your parishes will grow in Faith and in charity, in the joy of evangelisation. You will be a Church in which fathers, mothers, priests, religious, Catechists, children, the elderly, (and) young people walk together, one alongside the other, supporting one another, helping one another, loving one another as brothers, especially in moments of difficulty.”

Earlier that day the Pope met the father of a 3-year-old boy slain in the region’s drug war.

The Holy Father comforted the imprisoned father of Nicola Campolongo in the courtyard of a prison in the town of Castrovillari.

In January, the boy was shot, along with one of his grandfathers and the grandfather’s girlfriend, in an attack blamed on drug turf wars in the nearby town of Cassano all’Jonio. The attackers torched the car with all three victims inside.

The boy’s father and mother already were in jail at the time on drug trafficking charges. The Pope had expressed his horror following the attack and promised to visit the town.

The Holy Father embraced the man. He asked the Pope to pray for the boy’s mother, who was permitted to leave prison following her son’s slaying and remains under house arrest. The Pope also met two of the boy’s grandmothers.

A Vatican spokesman, Fr Ciro Benedettini, said the Pope told the father: “May children never again have to suffer in this way.”

“The two grandmothers were weeping like fountains,” Fr Benedettini added.

Calabria is the power base of the ‘Ndrangheta, a global drug trafficking syndicate that enriches itself by extorting businesses and infiltrating public works contracts in underdeveloped Calabria.

—Holy Father speaks of the ‘joy of the priesthood’ while in Calabria. Story in this week’s print edition of the SCO