Pope Francis’ crusade against corruption in the Catholic Church, including an overhaul of the scandal-scarred Vatican Bank,has put the new pontiff in the Italian mafia’s crosshairs, according to two organized crime experts.

“The strong will of Pope Francis, aiming to
disrupt the gangrene power centers, puts him at
risk. He disturbs the mafia very much,” Nicola
Gratteri, a top anti-mafia prosecutor in Italy, told
CNN on Thursday.

“I don’t have precise information about a plan of
the mafia against Pope Francis,” Gratteri
continued. “But if I did, I wouldn’t say.”
Gratteri, a deputy prosecutor in Reggio Calabria,
a city in southern Italy, is a well-known foe of
Calabria’s notorious mafia, known as
‘Ndrangheta.

The mob’s anger with the Pope centers on the
Vatican Bank, which the new pontiff has tried to
reform, according to experts on the Italian
underworld.

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Vatican officials were not immediately available
for comment. Earlier on Thursday, a Vatican
spokesperson strongly denied any concerns
about the Pope’s safety.
“The Holy See is not at all worried,” the Rev.
Federico Lombardi told the French wire service
Agence I.Media . ”These are the usual
inventions.”
In May, the Vatican Bank, officially known as the
Institute for Religious Works, issued its first-ever
report on money laundering, an apparent attempt
to improve its financial transparency.
The 64-page report details the Vatican’s efforts
to crack down on money laundering in particular,
though it made no mention of mafia connections.
The report found six charges of “suspicious
activity” within the past year.
In June, the Pope established a five-person
papal commission to investigate the activities of
the Vatican Bank, which has been under pressure
from international finance authorities to clean up
its murky business practices.
A month later, Italian prosecutors arrested a
priest who worked as a financial analyst for the
Vatican, accusing him of trying to help smuggle
tens of millions of euros across Europe using a
private plane in July 2012. That same month,
two top officials at the Vatican Bank resigned ,
as Italian prosecutors continued their three-year
investigation into the bank.
The Catholic Church and the Italian mafia have a
long and complicated history, said Antonio
Nicaso, an expert on organized crime in Italy and
co-author with Gratteri of a new book called
“Holy Water,” which explores the relationship
between mobsters and the church.
Underworld gangsters often paid for local church
repairs or bankrolled feast day celebrations for
Catholic saints, Nicaso told CNN. In exchange,
Catholic officials kept silent about their illicit
deeds.
“The church never raised the issue,” he said.
“The church has never excommunicated a
mobster.”
More recently, the mafia used the Vatican Bank
to smuggle money, Nicaso said, though he
offered no specific evidence. The Pope’s reforms
threaten that arrangement and will anger
organized crime, he added.
“We believe that this is an unprecedented
challenge to the economic power center of the
Vatican, and for that reason he may face some
kind of risk,” Nicaso said.
The Vatican has strongly denied any ties to the
Italian mafia.

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The Pope’s penchant for wading into the
massive crowds who attend his speeches and
events poses a particular security risk, Nicaso
said.
“He has to be more cautious. He can’t go walk
around Vatican Square anymore like he’s a
normal person.”
Asked if the mafia would dare try to assassinate
such a popular figure, Nicaso said, “There are so
many ways to kill a pope. They have to be
careful. But in the history of organized crime,
whenever they had to remove an obstacle, they
never thought about the consequences.”
In addition to the Vatican reforms, Francis in his
speeches has taken aim at corruption, saying on
Monday, for example, that a Christian “who gives
to the church with one hand but steals from the
other hand from the country, from the poor, is
unjust.”
The Pope then paraphrased Jesus, saying that it
would be better for a corrupt person “if
a millstone were put around his neck and he be
thrown into the sea.”
“He is changing the church,” Nicaso said. “It is
not a church of power and luxury anymore, and
his promise to restructure [the Vatican Bank] is
like a Copernican revolution.”

[url][/url] http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/14/prosecutor-pope-faces-mafia-threat/?sr=fb111413popmafia930p