They are lawless, they say.
Yet faith, they say, they have pegged to the body.
And even tattooed on it.
The documentary thus shows, face against the ground, an Italian mafioso called back to God, his back in evidence.
Two tattoos: a large face of Christ and the quote
"Give me your pussy"
, which is not exactly a biblical parable.
How, then, were these criminals who killed without shame able to reconcile faith and violence?
The Mafia God
(Thematics Prod) by Anne Véron, a specialist in Italian crime, answers this question, while taking us back to the origins of the connection between the Mafia and the Church, when it was a question of fighting against the evil influence of communism.
By the 1950s, crime was getting organized and the eminent Sicilian Cardinal Ruffini sanctified it.
Respect for traditions and generous donations, explains Anne Véron, offered the mafia the friendship of rural parishes.
And the Church did not say a word for a long time.
It was not until the 1990s that the Vatican raised its tone, which cost it attacks ordered by the ultra-violent Toto Riina.
To discover
Miss France 2023: discover the official photos of the 30 candidates
The God of the Mafia
in full
LE FIGARO. - If we put ourselves in the head of a mafioso, how to explain that we can make Jesus and Casa Nostra coexist?
Anne VÉRON -
The mafioso, the penitent tells us in the film, had the feeling of doing something good for society.
That's what he was taught too.
Often, in neighborhoods where the police had little power, members of the Mafia functioned, so to speak, as peacekeepers.
They went so far as to consider themselves
"vigilantes"
.
When they killed, it was therefore, according to them, for a good reason.
As for their internal wars, their argument was the following: the soldiers kill each other on the front, and we do not say that they are assassins.
The mafiosos thus convinced themselves that they had clean hands.
Religion and prayer were also there, of course, to be forgiven.
The penitent Gaspare Mutolo had spoken to me with fervor of the ritual of enthronement, a mystical trend, in which blood must be deposited on a holy image before burning it.
“When you do your baptism, you are somewhere else, you are high, you feel like God.
It's a feeling that lasts for several weeks.
You then have the right to life or death over people, the power to make important decisions.
People should respect you.
You can no longer hang out with the same people, but only people “like us”, from Cosa Nostra...”
, he told me.
He was also the one who told me that one of the big bosses of the mafia, Gaetano Badalamenti from Palermo,
said that "there is God in heaven and mafiosi on earth"
...
Conversely, how can the benevolence of certain priests towards them be explained?
In addition to the convergence of interests linked to the fight against communism, the mafia have always displayed pseudo family values, which pleased the Church.
They also financed the parishes, in the countryside and the districts.
Their wives had a role to play: they went to church regularly, had to do acts of charity.
All this made them look good.
Because if the priest accepted them at church, they were necessarily good people!
It should not be forgotten either that the priests in question were locals: they had grown up with the same mentality as them.
This proximity to the religious has partly earned the mafia the consent of the populations, one of the pillars of their power.
Without her, she would never have been so powerful.
Ultimately,
the strength of these criminal organizations was to be integrated at all levels of society.
Thus sat at the same table the priest, the mayor, the head of the mafia...
The documentary shows that the acquaintance between the church and the mafia was perceived in particular during the processions.
To be thanked for their generosity towards the parish and to flatter its image, the mafiosos could ask - always with courtesy, knowing that they were going to be obeyed - that the religious processions stop in front of the house of the local chief.
If it has largely decreased, the phenomenon still exists.
About five years ago, a video showed a procession in a village on the outskirts of Naples.
The mayor had warned that if she stopped in front of the mafioso's house, he would leave.
The procession stopped in front of the house in question - the boss was in a bathrobe, on his balcony.
The aedile left with a bang.
Reaction of the administration?
General indifference...
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/EJNVOWXNONDYDIXFYKNSPI2P4Y.jpg)