Mafia godfather's town lifts ban on hooded procession

Europe
Mafia godfather's town lifts ban on hooded procession
By DPA, Apr 5, 2007 - 9:05:06 PM

Corleone -, April 5 - Officials in Sicily have lifted a decades-old ban on hoods being worn during Corleone's traditional Good Friday procession.

The ban was introduced about 40 years ago to prevent mobsters from concealing their identity and shooting at each other while attending the religious ceremony.

The decision to lift the ban, reported Thursday in daily La Repubblica, was taken nearly a year after the Mafia's boss-of-bosses, Corleone-born Bernardo Provenzano, was arrested by police while hiding in a farmhouse not far from the town made famous worldwide by Marlon Brando in Francis Ford Coppola's Oscar-winning 1972 movie 'The Godfather'.

Provenzano, who is currently being held in a maximum-security prison in central Italy, had been wanted by police since 1963. His predecessor, Corleone-born Toto' Riina, was captured in 1993.

'Corleone is no longer the godfather's land, but the land where the godfather was arrested,' Palermo police chief Giuseppe Caruso said in commenting on the decision.

Cosa Nostra, as the Sicilian Mafia is known, used to kill on a near daily basis during Riina's bloodthirsty reign but has since opted for a 'low-key' strategy, avoiding attention-grabbing murders while continuing to nurture strong and unholy business ties with local entrepreneurs and politicians.

Reached by DPA, the head of parliament's anti-Mafia commission, Francesco Forgione, warned against reading too much into this week's decision.

'It doesn't mean that the Mafia isn't still strong, quite the contrary,' he said.

'A Mafia that stops shooting and wears a suit and a tie instead is even more dangerous in my opinion,' Forgione told DPA.

In a sign that Cosa Nostra's tentacles continue to spread across the island, police in Trapani Wednesday arrested the former deputy head of Sicily's regional government, Bartolo Pellegrino, on charges of mafia association.

Pellegrino is accused of lending his support to Mafia-controlled businesses that built 600 apartments in a protected area and without planning permission while he was in power, in 2001 and 2002.

Corleone's Good Friday procession is one of hundreds that take place each year across deeply Catholic Sicily at Easter time. The hoods are a reference to the Church's Inquisition during the Middle Ages.

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