Pope excommunicates mafiosi as police arrest 95

Francis visits Calabria region hit hard by organized crime

(ANSA) - Rome, June 23 - Police arrested 95 suspected Mafia figures in Palermo Monday on suspicion of involvement in extortion and other crimes, soon after Pope Francis announced the excommunication of all mafiosi. Investigators said they had identified leaders of a widespread gang involved in construction, real estate, and moving companies that allegedly drove out competition and suffocated the local economy.

The police sweep, dubbed Apocalypse, came on the heels of a visit to the nearby region of Calabria by the pope, who issued one of the strongest condemnations of organized crime heard from a pontiff in years. Francis accused criminal groups of the "adoration of evil" during a Mass on the plains of the small town of Sibari in Calabria, a region that has been racked by violence, corruption and mafia activity. Police have said that the Calabria-based 'Ndrangheta mafia has become the most powerful of Italy's mafias for its virtual stranglehold on the European cocaine trade.

Italians were particularly horrified this spring by the murder of a three-year-old boy in an indiscriminate revenge hit by a mafia clan. The charred remains of tiny toddler Nicola Campolongo, nicknamed Coco, were discovered in a burned-out car in the Calabrian town of Cassano allo Ionio. Organizers of the papal Mass in Sibari suggested as many as 200,000 people gathered under a hot sun to hear the pope condemn the violence around them. "Your land, which so beautiful, knows the signs of the consequences of this sin," said Francis during his Saturday visit to the region. "This evil must be fought, must be expelled".

He called on the local church to drive itself even more "so that good can prevail". "Our children ask this of us," he added. Francis has previously warned the mafia that their power and money are "dirty" and that hell awaits if they continue on their criminal path. "The power, the money that you have now from...mafia crimes is blood money and you cannot take it to the next life," Francis said in March during a memorial day for victims of crime.