More BS from the Pope, although I must admit that he knows a thing or two about the Mafia, being that he’s the leader of the biggest, richest and most destructive Mafia on the planet; the Roman Catholic Church. The hypocrisy of the Pope and his delinquent accomplices in the Vatican, along with the ignorance and stupidity of those who support him and his corrupt organization is nothing short of astounding. TGO
Refer to story below. Source: Associated Press
PALERMO, Sicily – Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute Sunday to a priest slain by the Mafia and encouraged people in Sicily not to resign themselves to deep-rooted evil on an island where organized crime has held sway for centuries.
Sicilians had been hoping Benedict would use his words and presence during his first visit as pontiff to give a boost to efforts to try to rid the island of Cosa Nostra.
“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,” Benedict told tens of thousands of faithful at Mass at a sunshine-drenched park alongside Palermo’s waterfront.
The pope cited the Rev. Pino Puglisi, who stirred consciences with his anti-Mafia preaching in one of Palermo’s poorest and most heavily mobster-infested neighborhoods. Since Puglisi was gunned down by the Mafia in 1993, his supporters have been clamoring for the Vatican to officially proclaim him a martyr, paving the way toward sainthood.
Among those recently backing an appeal for the pope to beatify Puglisi were Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore and Italian novelist Dacia Maraini.
But the pope on Sunday made no mention of martyrdom for Puglisi.
Benedict in his homily acknowledged that many Sicilians endured “physical and moral suffering because of organized crime.”
“Today I am in your midst to give witness with my closeness and my remembering (you) in prayer,” the pope said, sitting under a canopy to shield him from the late morning Mediterranean sun. “I am here to give you strong encouragement not to be afraid to clearly give witness to human and Christian values.”
Benedict said the just must persevere even amid a “tremendous situation of violence, iniquity and oppression.”
Evil-doers should be ashamed of offending God as well as society with their deeds, the pope said in a likely reference to mobsters.
But nowhere in his homily did Benedict directly take to task the mobsters themselves, as his predecessor, John Paul II, did in one of his most emotional and vehement denunciations of that long papacy.
Then, amid a backdrop of ancient temples near Agrigento, John Paul in a trembling voice, lashed out in improvised remarks at the Mafiosi, demanding that they convert from their evil ways or suffer the wrath of God.
That was in 1993, a year after separate bombings engineered by the Mafia killed the island’s two top prosecutors. John Paul hailed such slain servants of the state as “martyrs of justice, indirectly of faith.”
The murders also spurred a crackdown on the mob, leading to the capture of fugitive top Cosa Nostra bosses who had eluded the law for decades and a steady stream of Mafia turncoats breaking with their code of silence to cooperate with prosecutors.
Benedict’s final event of the day is a pep rally for young people in the Sicilian capital’s center.
Young people have recently been the main engine behind an anti-extortion campaign that gave shopkeepers and other local business owners across the island the courage to refuse to pay the mob so-called “protection money” and go to the police to denounce the extortionists.
