“They are not with God, they are excommunicated." The words of Pope Francis about the organised crime gangs that have notoriously plagued Italy.

John Laurenson travels to Calabria, the homeland of the world’s most powerful Mafia organisation, to meet the priests who are fighting organised crime on the front line.

The N’drangheta has long overtaken Sicily’s Cosa Nostra as the biggest organised criminal group. It is involved in almost all of the cocaine trafficking into Europe and worth an estimated 3.4% of the Italian economy. It is also the cruelest.

A year ago it carried out an atrocious assassination in which hitmen shot dead a man, his girlfriend and his three year-old grandson before burning their bodies. In his Angelus prayer, Pope Francis called on the people who had “dirtied themselves by this terrible crime to repent and convert” and said Mafia members were excommunicated.

He meets the priests who, driven by their faith and armed with the words of Pope Francis, are fighting the Mafia with words and deeds. Sometimes using, to good ends, property seized from convicted mafia criminals.

John also speaks to the woman whose father was murdered by the N’drangheta and hears all about the Mafia’s strange, often paganistic, Catholic rituals. And in a sanctuary built to the honour of the Virgin Mary there is an annual pilgrimage attended by Mafia members who even fly in for it from other parts of the world.

Producer / Presenter: John Laurenson

(Photo: Pope Francis shakes peoples’ hands as he leaves San Gregorio church in Rome in March 21, 2014. Pope Francis demonstrated a stand against organised crime by meeting with relatives of mafia victims during a ceremony on March 21, a step to help overcome the Church's historic ties with dons claiming to be God-fearing Catholics. Credit: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images) Show less