Introduction

This book on faith-based organisations (FBOs) and exclusion in European cities has a long history. The core idea came about in 2000 when one of us (Justin Beaumont) first came across and was immediately gripped by Norman Lewis’ The honoured society (Lewis, 1984). The British travel writer's non-sensationalist yet sensitive and acutely aware handling of the Sicilian mafia sparked the ideas that over time developed and matured, culminating in this book. In one particularly astounding chapter, Lewis reveals the compelling story of Padre Camelo, the 80-year-old Capuchin (Franciscan) priest, and his fellow monks from the city and commune Mazzarino, in the province of Caltanissetta, Sicily, Italy, who in the 1950s and 1960s terrorised local inhabitants with extortion rackets, violent threats at the confessional box and murder.

The case of the ‘Mazzarino Friars’, as it became popularly known (see Polara, 1989), was a hotly debated controversy during the early 1960s at a time of intense conflict between clerical and anti-clerical political forces. The clerics, namely the Democrazia Cristiana Church and other Catholic institutions led by Palermo Archbishop Ernesto Ruffini, waged war against their various opponents who felt the sinister Mafiosi monks rightly deserved to be punished for their crimes. Later the errant friars were indeed sentenced to 30 years imprisonment, but the decision was later commuted. The leniency of the court decision outraged many jurists and citizens at the time.

For those familiar with the longer history of bandit and robber monks riding with outlaw bands and attacking lonesome travellers and isolated farms in rural Sicily, the Mazzarino scandal probably came as little surprise. What was striking, however, was the complex interpenetration of seemingly distinct forces – the church, the state, religion, politics, government, people – in a country ravished by scarce resources, financial and political corruption, and extreme and debilitating poverty.

This book at an abstract level studies the interpenetration between religion and politics, church and state, between officialdom and more informal channels of interaction between institutions and the people they profess to govern. It does so in empirical and theoretical terms via a comparison of FBOs and their actions against poverty and social exclusion across various European cities. We neither offer an analysis of the present-day mafia and the religious influences therein, nor do we engage in detailed excavations of the political actions of religiously motivated figures throughout history.