The Archdiocese of Catania, Sicily’s second-largest city, has put a three-year ban on godparents at baptism and sponsors at confirmation. Other Sicilian dioceses are planning similar steps. “In the Land of the Godfather Comes a Ban on Them” was the apt headline in The New York Times. The archdiocese has instituted the ban because of the entanglement of godfathers with mafia patronage in Sicily.

The cinematic splendor of the baptism sequence in The Godfather, with Michael Corleone professing the baptismal creed as his henchmen execute his rivals, can make the scandal of it all seem almost attractive, even beautiful. Real life is rather more bloody than that, and the Catholic Church in Sicily, after a very long time, is trying to do something concrete about eliminating that scandal. …

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