The Sicilian church remained silent about the mafia until the late 1920s

Evidence

Until after the First World War there is virtually no record of church intervention or complaint against the mafia (for one exception, see Marino 1986: 235). Even under the Fascist regime, when the state became actively more sympathetic toward the church, the attitude of the clergy remained ambiguous. A few bishops in Sicily, after considerable delay, finally in 1927 gave formal support to Cesare Mori’s fierce antimafia campaign, even though a number of priests were implicated in the ensuing trials (Duggan 1989: 216-218). — Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia The Business of…, 129

Categorization

• XREF: Church silence on mafia violence parallels the Corleones’ use of religious ceremony as a facade — both cases of an authority shielding crime by non-intervention, relevant to the reader’s private-enforcement model.