Pope Denounces Mafia for Murder of Three-Year-Old Child

What kind of people kill a 3-year-old child to as part of an execution of his grandfather?

Evidently, the mafia in Italy.

This isn’t the movie mafia of the Corleones and the Sopranos who have a “code” and love bambinos. These are cold-blooded killers who kill a baby in a car seat.

Pope Francis denounced this act. It’s interesting that there are people in high places who feel the Holy Father is already “being watched” by the mafia because of  his work to reform corruption. I considered whether or not to talk about that. But my experience has been that the light of day is the best disinfectant, and the best preventative.

From the Irish Times:

Pope Francis has bitterly denounced the Calabrian Mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, following the killing of a three-year-old boy caught up in a Mafia “execution” in Cassano allo Jonio in Calabria last week.

Speaking at his Sunday Angelus, the Pope called on the faithful to pray for Coco Campolongo, burned to death as he sat in a baby seat in his grandfather’s car.

“This ferocity against such a small child seems unprecedented in the annals of organised crime,” said the Pontiff. “Let us pray with Coco, who is surely now in heaven with Jesus, for the people who committed this crime so that they might repent and be converted to the Lord”

Little Coco had the misfortune to be sitting in his baby seat in the back of a Fiat Punto car when mafia killers shot his grandfather, 52-year Giuseppe Iannicelli along with his 27-year-old Moroccan partner, Ibtisssan Tous. Police believe that the car was then immediately burnt in the remote rural zone where it was later discovered by a hunter out for a Sunday shoot.

When investigators examined the car, they found three bodies with Coco’s grandfather shut in the boot, whilst the Moroccan woman was still in the front passenger seat and the child was still in his baby-seat. Police point to a 50 cent coin left on the roof of the burnt-out car as an ‘Ndrangheta “signature”.