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ROME (AP) — Italy's president, whose brother was murdered by Cosa Nostra, traveled on Sunday to an organized crime stronghold to honor hundreds of Italians slain by the country's crime clans over the past decades.
President Sergio Mattarella also praised the judges, prosecutors, police officers, union leaders, businessmen and politicians who courageously combatted or denounced organized crime.
During the ceremony in Locri, a Calabrian town that is a long-time base of the 'ndrangheta crime syndicate, the names of innocent victims — some caught in the crossfire of turf wars — were read aloud. Among the names was that of the president's brother, Piersanti Mattarella, the Sicilian governor assassinated in Palermo in 1980.
The event anticipated Italy's annual remembrance day, occurring later this week, for victims of organized crime.
Near Naples, hundreds of scouts filled a church in the mobster-infested town of Casal di Principe to pay tribute to a priest, Giuseppe Diana, who denounced the local Caselesi crime clan of the Camorra syndicate. Diana was shot to death in the church sacristy in 1994.
Mattarella lamented the "Mafia is still strong" and controls or tries to infiltrate much of Italy's economy. He denounced "gray areas, those of complicity," which mobsters exploit, a reference to corruptible politicians and public administrators who, investigations have found, help mafiosi win lucrative contracts in construction and social services, such as hospitals.
While rooted for generations in Italy's underdeveloped south, the 'ndrangheta, Camorra and other syndicates have also infiltrated businesses in affluent northern Italy. Mobsters have been laundering illicit profits in popular restaurants and cafes in Rome and elsewhere. Legitimate manufacturing businesses in the north turned to the Camorra to illegally dispose of toxic waste to save money and avoid bureaucracy.
Still, progress has come. Young people in Sicily inspired many shopkeepers and industrialists there to stop paying Cosa Nostra "protection" money.
Locri Bishop Francesco Oliva insisted Calabria wants to break with a past "stained by the blood of crime feuds that sowed death and desperation."
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Frances D'Emilio is on twitter at www.twitter.com/fdemilio
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This story has been corrected to show that Francesco Oliva is a bishop, not archbishop.
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