Italy’s Mafia-fighting ‘street priest’ Archbishop Domenico Battaglia to become a cardinal

Vatican City, Nov 14, 2024 / 11:55 am

Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples, a late addition to the pope’s roster of new cardinals to be created next month, has commanded headlines for years for his strong stand against organized crime in southern Italy.

Battaglia’s reputation as a “street priest” close to drug addicts and the poor has also led some to view him as Pope Francis’ Italian counterpart, christening him the “Bergoglio of South Italy.”

Pope Francis announced earlier this month that he had added the 61-year-old archbishop to the list of new cardinals he will create in a ceremony at the Vatican on Dec. 7.

When Battaglia, or “Don Mimmo,” as he likes to be called, was tapped at the end of 2020 to lead Naples, one of southern Italy’s most important dioceses, he was already almost four years into leading another Church territory in the Campania region — Cerreto Sannita-Telese-Sant’Agata de’ Goti — with its estimated 88,000 Catholics at the time.

Now he is leading over 1.4 million Catholics in the Archdiocese of Naples, where he wasted no time in speaking up against the Camorra, the region’s most prominent organized crime group, after his installation in February 2021.

In a statement published online in October 2021, Battaglia responded to a spate of deadly violence in Naples with an appeal for members of organized crime groups to “be converted.” 

“They are killing Naples! The trail of blood that is crossing the city these days, causing death to young lives and terror and anguish to entire neighborhoods, streets, families, cannot leave us indifferent,” he said.

Battaglia’s anti-Mafia initiatives include hands-on outreach to the city’s most affected districts and an educational project developed with members of civil society and the private sector.

From Day 1 in Naples, Battaglia signaled his priorities for the archdiocese: Before his installation Mass in the cathedral, he made a pilgrimage to visit the impoverished neighborhoods of the city.

In a letter to the people of Naples ahead of his consecration, the cardinal-designate wrote that “it is to the least of these that the Lord entrusts the dream of a Church faithful to the Gospel, which makes us share the salt of every pastoral project, which trusts not in structures and programs, but in the mercy of the Father.”

Battaglia grew up in Italy’s deep south in Calabria — the region from which originates the deeply-rooted ‘Ndrangheta crime group.

As a young priest in the Diocese of Catanzaro-Squillace, where he was ordained in 1988, Battaglia served in a center for addicts, a community he has continued to advocate for in the intervening years.

He is also outspoken in his support of victims of domestic violence, the elderly, and the unemployed.

The soon-to-be cardinal is a good friend of another well-known figure and social activist in the Church in Italy, Father Luigi Ciotti.

The 79-year-old priest of Turin is the founder of the associations Gruppo Abele, which helps people with drug and other addictions, and Libera, which combats the abuses of criminal organizations like the Mafia.

“It is oftentimes easy to live our faith inside a church, inside a temple. It is much more difficult to live the faith outside the door of that temple, inside our homes, in our daily lives,” Battaglia said in a homily in Naples in February 2021.

“But today more than ever we need to return to being credible because only credibility really helps us to live to the fullest the beauty of the Gospel. All together we are called out that door to proclaim the beauty of the Gospel that changes lives, that fills our lives.”

“Faith is the ability to choose, to fight for the human against all that is inhuman,” he continued. “Nothing is more important in life than stooping down so that another by grasping your neck can rise up.”