Pope urges Sicilians to fight Mafia

(October 4, 2010) Pope Benedict XVI encouraged Sicilians on Sunday not to resign themselves to deep-rooted evil on an island where organized crime has held sway for centuries. The temptation toward discouragement, to resignation, comes to those who are weak in faith, to those who confuse evil with good, to those who think that, faced with often profound evil, there is nothing to do, Pope Benedict told tens of thousands of faithful at an open-air Mass Sunday morning at the seafront of Palermo, the capital of the southern Italian island of Sicily where he was on a day-long pastoral visit. Pope Benedict lamented that many Sicilians endured physical and moral suffering because of organized crime. I am here to give you strong encouragement not to be afraid to clearly give witness to human and Christian values, the pope said. Noting the difficulties in Sicilian society due to unemployment, uncertainty for what tomorrow might hold and the physical and moral suffering caused by organized crime on the island, the Pope turned to Sunday's liturgical readings to call them to look to the future with hope. Explaining Luke’s account of the disciples asking the Lord to increase their faith, the Pope observed that they were not asking for material goods or privileges, "but for the grace of faith, that orientates and illuminates all life; they are asking for the grace to recognize God and to be able to be in an intimate relationship with Him, receiving ... all of His gifts, also those of courage, love and hope." "Just as a lever moves much more than its own weight, so also a pinch of faith, is able to do unthinkable, extraordinary things ...,” the Pope said. “The faith - trusting Christ, accepting Him, letting Him transform us, following Him to the very end - makes humanly impossible things possible, in every reality," he said.
Later at an evening rally in a Palermo square, Pope Benedict urged young people to resist the Mafia and its path of death. In an address which centred on family values, the Pope told them, "Do not succumb to the temptations of the Mafia, which is a path of death, incompatible with the gospel, as your bishops have told you many times," he told them.
In another meeting with priests, religious and seminarians, in Palermo's cathedral Pope Benedict lamented the barbarous 1993 murder of Fr. Giuseppe Puglisi, who stirred consciences with his anti-Mafia preaching in one of Palermo's most heavily mobster-infested poor neighbourhoods. He urged priests’ to keep Fr. Puglisi's memory alive by imitating his heroic example. Earlier in 1993, during a visit to the Sicilian city of Agrigento, Pope John Paul II had vehemently denounced the Mafia, demanding its bosses convert from their evil ways or suffer the wrath of God. He had urged Sicily's priests to rally the faithful against organized crime. A few months later, Fr. Puglisi was shot dead in the neighbourhood where he tried to galvanize young people to turn their backs on organized crime. Young people have recently been the main engine behind an anti-extortion campaign that gave shopkeepers across the island the courage to refuse to pay the mob so-called protection money.
On his way to Palermo airport for his flight back to Rome, Pope Benedict stopped at the spot along the highway where the Mafia detonated a bomb in 1992, killing top Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone, his wife and some of his bodyguards. The Vatican said, Pope Benedict got out of his car, put some flowers at the spot and prayed.