“New Landlords” is Cafébabel’s series about citizens who reinvest property from organised crime seized by the justice system. How and why do they create projects for the common good in these places which have, in the past, served the interests of the mafia? In this first part of our inquiry, we go to inland Naples.
“New Landlords” is Cafébabel’s series about citizens who reinvest property from organised crime seized by the justice system. How and why do they create projects for the common good in these places which have, in the past, served the interests of the mafia? In this first part of our inquiry, we go to inland Naples.
Knisja u Mafja
by Robert Aloisio, published by sayitpublications, 2021
When the Italian police arrested Bernardo Provenzano on April 11, 2006, after 43 years on the run, everyone was amazed at how the head of Cosa Nostra, the powerful Sicilian Mafia, was hiding in a poor place, living a simple life. But what most people overlooked was the fact that his hideout was full of holy pictures and statues, symbols of the Catholic faith and instruments of prayer.
Aloisio writes that, at first, he dismissed this as an insignificant detail related to Provenzano, but his research revealed that almost all mafiosi are religious people who claim to do what they do with good intentions. Given that the Mafia is incompatible with the Gospel, it beggars belief that many people, even within the Church, thought that their coexistence was in no way contradictory.