The Vatican is considering a new doctrine for excommunicating Catholics convicted of corruption or mafia-related offences.
At a conference on corruption attended by bishops, prosecutors, UN officials and victims of organised crime last week, Pope Francis instructed a commission to hammer out the detail of the doctrine.
Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican’s retired ambassador to the UN in Geneva, said: “Our effort is to create a mentality, a culture of justice that fights corruption and promotes the common good.”
The commission is looking at steps that can be taken to create legalisation and policy to prevent organised crime, Tomasi said, adding that “corruption is like a woodworm that infiltrates the processes of development for poor countries or in rich countries, which ruins the relations between institutions and people”.
Monsignor Michele Pennisi, archbishop of Monreale in Sicily, told Italian daily La Stampa: “We asked ourselves why the rest of Italy and the world should not have the same rules.
“The group raised the problems of Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers — so we need a ‘penal decree’, a formal legal act at the national and global level.”
Excommunication, the action of officially excluding those sanctioned from participation in the sacraments and services of the church, is a severe punishment in Catholic doctrine.
Italian anti-corruption czar Raffaele Cantone said the move was revolutionary, and would be hard for Catholics involved in corruption and organised crime to ignore. He said organised criminals did not deserve forgiveness, as their way of life makes them incapable of repentance.
Pope Francis signalled that organised criminals were destined for hell in 2014 while denouncing the notorious ‘ndrangheta mafia clan.
“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 at a mass in southern Italy at the time.
He has also denounced corruption in politics and business. While working as the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he wrote a book on organised crime, in which he highlighted the distinction between sin and corruption and explored the culture that allows corruption to thrive.
Separately, local media has reported that officials in Sicily have refused to pay Italy’s “baby bonus” to the youngest daughter of jailed Mafia boss Toto Riina.
Lucia, 36, a painter who lives in Corleone, is the daughter of former Cosa Nostra boss Salvatore “Toto” Riina, who was jailed in 1993 and has terminal cancer.
The baby bonus is paid by the Italian government to new mothers with annual incomes of less than €25,000.
A court ruled earlier this month that Toto Riina, who was known as the “boss of bosses”, would be released from jail so as he could return to his home to die with dignity.
