Pope Excommunicates Italian Mafia Members

Pope Francis told Italian Mafia members Saturday that they are excommunicated from the Catholic Church, reports CNN.

“Those who in their life have gone along the evil ways, as in the case of the mafia, they are not with God, they are excommunicated," Francis said.

It is the first time a Pope has spoken of excommunication for the Mafia. Excommunication, which excludes Catholics from the church, can be imposed by church authorities or incurred automatically for certain grave offenses.

During a one-day visit to Calabria, in southern Italy, the Pope denounced the local mafia, called ‘Ndrangheta, as an example of “the adoration of evil and contempt for the common good.”

As Murray Rothbard and many other libertarian scholars have pointed out, the Mafia does a lot less evil than most government leaders and in many instances does good by providing services that the government attempts to ban.

In 1973, Rothbard wrote in an article titled, A Future of Peace and Capitalism:

Take, for another example, the Mafia, which also suffers from a bad press. What the Mafia does on a local scale, the state does on an enormous scale, but the state of course has a much better press.

If the Pope was serious about this excommunication stuff, he would excommunicate the Catholic warmonger John Kerry.

-RW