Religione, mafie, Chiese: un rapporto controverso tra devozione e secolarizzazione

Talking about men of honour’s religiousness and examining those relationships which - over the time - have regulated the contacts between clerics and mafia people, between religious institutions and criminal organizations, it means to deal with many levels of analysis.At first it is necessary to understand what’s the meaning of devotion and religious rituals in mafia world and which role the faith plays in the criminal context; then we must consider the attitudes that the Church has gradually showed about mafias, analyzing both the official pronouncements of the highest church hierarchies and the pastoral practices adopted by the priests in their territories, but also the “ecclesiological” debate developed on the theme.Finally, it cannot be neglected the deepening about specific crucial issues emerged from the studies and solicited by the news; among these: the relationship between God's Justice and State’s Justice, the distinction between “repentance” and justice collaboration, the difference between sin and crime; the possibility of an anti-mafia pastoral or the controversial issue of the excommunication for mafia’s men.These important questions also make clear the difficult relationship between the Church and the State, called upon to collaborate against the mafia emergency although from divergent perspectives; this situation shows that, in some way, the Church is still unable to express an homogeneous strategy, while she is determined to safeguard the specificity of her role and committed to preserve her language and her identity.Inside this multilevel context, the paper is focused on describing the latest developments in the relationship between the Church and the Mafia, observing how the analytical framework is becoming more and more complex because of the deep changes occurred in mafia’s criminal systems and because of new emerging problematic questions which demand more sophisticated analysis tools and more decisive interventions.