Friday, February 2, 2007

Mafia priests

I'm taking classes at The Athenaeum of Ohio on Wednesday and Thursday nights this quarter. My Church History prof is a great storyteller. We got on the subject of people who are not given a funeral Mass--for instance, Mafia dons--because it would be scandalous. So then he told us about a priest who was in an area with a large Mafia population. This priest went on vacation and told his replacement "If someone dies, no matter who it is, bury him." It seems that he had recently refused to say a funeral Mass. Shortly afterward, he'd heard a noise at his front door, went to see what it was and saw someone had left the tabernacle and the statue of Mary from church on his front porch. Then the church blew up. "They have great faith," our prof said, then skipped a beat. "They need to work on their love, but they have great faith."
There was another priest he knew, a Jesuit (our prof is a Jesuit; for some reason most of the protagonists in his stories are Jesuits as well) who was known as "the Mafia priest." He would get a call: "Meet us at the corner of 6th and Market", he'd go, a car would drive by and toss out someone half-dead to whom he would then give last rites. Or this priest would be picked up and hear the confession of the fellow in the back seat who was about to be fitted for cement shoes. "And that's if they liked the guy they were gonna off," our prof said. "If they didn't like him, they'd wait until he had an adulterous night with his girlfriend and then kill him so he'd go straight to hell."

2 comments:

Beth said...

I am absolutely stealing that story about the church blowing up as soon as possible.

Anonymous said...

Drive by last rites... now that's a concept I thought I would never of heard of before...

What an interesting story... thanks for sharing.