“When a society ignores the poor, persecutes them, criminalizes them, and constrains them to join the Mafia, that society is impoverished to the point of misery, it loses its freedom and prefers ‘the garlic and the onions’ of slavery, of the slavery of its egoism, of the slavery of its pusillanimity,” he added. “That society ceases to be Christian.”
“…constrains them to join the Mafia,”… That’s an interesting comment. He has poked at the mafia before at the beginning of his pontificate but we really never hear much about the mafia in mainstream news these days. Is he suggesting that they are a significant underground force I wonder?