With Decree of 13 December 2023, His Excellency Mons. Attilio Nostro, Bishop of the Diocese of Mileto-Nicotera-Tropea, has required to each confraternity erected in the diocesan territory to send to the Diocesan Curia within thirty days the complete list of members, also including place and date of birth and residence address. The fulfillment was requested to encourage, on the basis of a spirit of ecclesial communion and collaboration, the exercise of the right-duty of supervision of the ecclesiastical authority - foreseen by can. 305, § 1 of the Code of Canon Law - on the preservation of the integrity of the faith and customs of associations of the faithful also for the purposes of preventing abuses in discipline.

Any failure to comply with the request could well justify the exercise of the right of visit by the ecclesiastical authority and the adoption of the appropriate measures provided for by the Codex iuris canonici to prevent their activity from constituting a cause of serious damage to the doctrine or ecclesiastical discipline, or scandal for the faithful.

Mons Nostro's initiative aims to effectively counter the tendency of the 'ndrangheta to self-refer in the religious context, supporting the effort to free the confraternities from any subjection to forces and pressures that have nothing religious or sacred about them, already urged in the Guidelines of the Calabrian Bishops’ Conference dated 15 September 2021 per un "sentire e agire comuni" del clero, dei consacrati e dei fedeli laici delle Diocesi di Calabria. No ad ogni forma di mafie!

In this sense, the Decree on confraternities constitutes a specific implementation of what is indicated in the Guidelines of the Calabrian Bishops’ Conference for the territory of the Diocese of Mileto-Nicotera- Tropea and gives continuity to the action of prevention and fight against criminal infiltration already impressed by the previous Bishop Mons. Renzo, culminating with the issuing on 12 February 2015 of the diocesan regulation of processions ad experimentum for the three-year period 2015-2018. The 2015’s regulation, with the aim of eradicating criminal interference in the carrying out of religious processions, required, for example, the bearers of the statues to sign a specific declaration proving the absence of criminal convictions or criminal proceedings against them for mafia crimes.

Through the Decree on confraternities, Mons. Nostro concretely renews this commitment. The transmission of the names of diocesan confraternities’ members will in fact allow the ecclesiastical authority to intervene effectively in the event of the participation of clan’s affiliates within the associations.