Roadmap to Hell

by Barbie Latza Nadeau

  Together with the nuns, the priests have called on a local Catholic exorcist named Father Giuseppe Scarpitta who performs exorcisms between 9 a.m. and noon and 4:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and by special appointment. All exorcists trained by the Catholic Church perform rituals against soul possession by a variety of evil spirits, including black magic and JuJu curses. But in Naples, Father Scarpitta and the other exorcists have learned to personalize the ceremony to include items not normally found in Catholic exorcism rites.

  It must be noted that the rite of exorcism is incredibly common in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in southern Italy. In a typical month, local exorcists can perform more than two hundred exorcisms. It is not uncommon to witness the rite. In 2015, there was such concern for the spiritual health of the nearby community of Castellammare di Stabia after a spate of religious artifact thefts and damage to crosses, that the local parish rented a helicopter and performed an exorcism rite from the sky over the entire community.34

  Not only were the locals convinced their souls had been saved, but some twenty-eight blocked fountains from the local ancient baths suddenly sprang back to life after years without water. It was a miracle, according to townspeople.

  When possible, the Neapolitan exorcists try to mimic the JuJu rite by including vials of powders or liquids to represent the same elements of the original curse. They follow the Catholic exorcism rite to the letter, but the enhancements work to convince the girls that they are not just exorcising a demon but also reversing the curse. The only other way is to return to the original witch doctor.

  Exorcisms can be performed in private homes, but the one I witnessed was carried out in the very creepy basement of the La Chiesa della Missione ai Vergine, or Church of the Mission of the Virgins, on Via Vergini near the archeological museum in the center of Naples. The church, built in 1724 by the Neapolitan architect Luigi Vanvitelli, has a baroque facade and unassuming interior. Absent are the colorful frescoes and ceiling adornments for which many Neapolitan churches are known. Like the African church, it is lodged between two buildings that appear to have been built around it, likely illegally.

  I attended an exorcism for a Nigerian woman I will call May, who was receiving mental health care after being systematically tortured by a client in Naples who kept her tied to a bed in his apartment for several months. She looked vacant and traumatized. She was accompanied by Sister Maria Teresa, who had urged her at least to try the exorcism to rid herself of the curse since the mental health treatment wasn’t helping and certainly didn’t address breaking the curse.

  Back in the basement of the Church of the Mission of the Virgins, Father Scarpitta laid out the altar with a pewter aspergillum to sprinkle holy water, an elaborate crucifix and his well-worn prayer book. May knelt on a small kneeler with tattered green velvet in front of him. Sister Maria Teresa stood behind her with her hand firmly on May’s shoulder, as if to hold her down in case she started to levitate. The only smell was that of old candle wax from the hundreds of used votive candles stacked up in a corner of the basement that had been lit by the little old ladies and widows of Naples to honor their dead.

  The exorcism rite is hardly like it is depicted in pop culture, with the exception of the dark church basement. According to the Catholic Church Book of Rites, the exorcist must first go to confession to clear his own soul, thereby not offering any competition in the way of an unclean soul for the devil during the ritual.35 I did not witness Father Scarpitta’s confession, but I assume he followed the protocol.

  Then, wearing a purple stole over a simple tunic, he sprinkled holy water on himself, May and Sister Maria Teresa before starting a long list of prayers including the litany of the saints. Twenty minutes later, he cast out the devil, reciting a prayer in Latin that translates to the one listed in the Roman Catholic catechism.

  “I cast you out, unclean spirit, along with every Satanic power of the enemy, every specter from hell, and all your fell companions; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said in Latin, forming the sign of the cross first on him and then towards May, whose head was down.

  Be gone and stay far from this creature of God. For it is He who commands you, He who flung you headlong from the heights of heaven into the depths of hell. It is He who commands you, He who once stilled the sea and the wind and the storm. Hearken, therefore, and tremble in fear, Satan, you enemy of the faith, you foe of the human race, you begetter of death, you robber of life, you corrupter of justice, you root of all evil and vice; seducer of men, betrayer of the nations, instigator of envy, font of avarice, fomenter of discord, author of pain and sorrow.

  May didn’t move during the entire rite, although Sister Maria Teresa shifted somewhat nervously from foot to foot. I was one of about a dozen people kneeling in the pews behind them. Being raised as a Catholic myself, it is very difficult not to kneel when others kneel. We all watched intently. I was half waiting for smoke to come out of her body or some other incredible spectacle to unfold. It didn’t, but when it was over May couldn’t keep her eyes open. She wanted to lie down in the pews and go to sleep. Sister Maria Teresa helped her up the stairs to the main floor of the church where she tried to lie down again. They got into a dark blue Fiat Panda double parked outside with another nun waiting behind the wheel and sped away. I have no idea what happened to her. Father Scarpitta holds weekly prayer services as post-exorcism spiritual maintenance to keep the bad spirits away from the souls he has cleared of the devil.

  When I posed the question about exorcising the JuJu curse to Cardinal Nicholas, who, as an Englishman, I had expected to raise an eyebrow, he said, “why not?”

  As he explained it, Satan is not a one-size-fits-all, and skilled exorcists are trained to understand the particular spiritual weakness with which they are faced. If a devout woman believes it is the JuJu curse that has possessed her soul, there is nothing in the Catholic rulebook that would stop an exorcist from addressing that particular demon, so long as he follows the rite. “If it works to free them, then what is the problem?” he asked.

  The Catholic cemetery in Pozzallo, Sicily, is home to the ornate tombs of Mafia dons and the nameless graves of unknown migrants and refugees.

  4

  Italy’s DNA: God, Girls and the Mafia

  “Having black skin in this country is a limit to a civil life. Racism is here too: it is made of arrogance, the abuse of power, and daily violence towards those who ask for none other than solidarity and respect . . . Sooner or later one of us will be killed, and then you will know that we exist.” – Jerry Essan Masslo, South African migrant murdered near Naples

  BAIA VERDE – In 1955, around the time the Coppola brothers were drawing up plans to create their utopian village off the coast near Castel Volturno, Pupetta Maresca committed her first murder. She was twenty years old and heavily pregnant at the time. The former beauty queen was on her way to the cemetery near Casal di Principe to lay flowers on her dead Mafioso husband’s tomb, which she had done every day since his murder a few months earlier, when she saw her husband’s killer on the street. She ordered her driver to stop, got out of the car and shot her husband’s killer dead with the Smith & Wesson .38 pistol she had retrieved from her husband’s nightstand, and which she carried in her handbag for just such an occasion. The killing avenged the murder of her husband, whose death had been ordered by the rival Camorra clansman. She was quickly caught and tried for the crime, for which she had no remorse, telling the judge she would do it again without a thought. From that point on, she was known as “Madame Camorra” or “the Diva of Crime,” and she set the bar when it came to the level of loyalty expected by a Camorra woman to her man.

  Pupetta’s son was born in prison where he stayed with her behind bars for the first three years of his life before being handed over to his maternal grandmother. When Pupetta was released at the age of thirty-one, she fell in love with another gangster with whom she had twins. A jealous man, he would later be accused of killing her first son, whose
body has never been found but which is believed to be buried in the cement pillar of an overpass near Naples. She stayed with her son’s suspected killer anyway out of loyalty – a loyalty she had created but from which she was ultimately unable to escape. Pupetta was eventually pardoned even though she was implicated in a string of murders and other Camorra crimes. She retired to a terraced apartment in Sorrento where she still lives alone at the time of writing.

  Far from being scorned because of her criminal ways, Pupetta Maresca has enjoyed considerable fame. Songs have been written about her and when she was on trial for murder, she received dozens of marriage proposals. She was the inspiration for the protagonist of the 1958 film La Sfida (The Heat) as well as the subject of a made-for-TV movie called The Case of Pupetta Maresca, in which she was played by Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of the dictator Benito Mussolini.

  Not surprisingly perhaps, Pupetta owned one of the original villas in Castel Volturno on the Baia Verde near the Coppola Village. It was there that she spent many summer weekends, hosting parties for Camorra associates and occasionally harboring fugitives. The house was also allegedly used as a drug warehouse in later years and was confiscated around the time the first Coppola Village towers were brought down.

  In 2010, the Italian state gave Pupetta’s villa to a migrant rights advocacy group known as the Jerry Essan Masslo Association. Masslo was a black South African who was murdered in Italy in 1989 in a violent racist hate crime at the hands of the Camorra after he stood up against the slave labor conditions he and other refugees were forced to endure. He and scores of other Africans worked for a few lire a day and had to sleep in appalling labor camps with little attention to nutrition or hygiene. He was part of the original surge of African laborers who came to work in the tomato fields long before the Camorra poisoned the land or the area became a hotbed for sexual slavery. Masslo was given a state funeral and his death sparked protests against racism in what was then (and very much still is) a monoculture Italy.

  Two days before he was murdered, he was interviewed by a journalist working on the program Non Solo Nero (Not Just Black) for RAI’s TG2 news program. His quote proved prophetic. “I thought that in Italy I would find a space to live, a breath of civilization, and a reception that would allow me to live in peace and to cultivate the dream of a future without barriers or prejudices,” he said. “But I am disappointed. Having black skin in this country is a limit to a civil life. Racism is here too: it is made of arrogance, the abuse of power, and daily violence towards those who ask for none other than solidarity and respect. We in the Third World are contributing to the development of your country, but it seems that this has no weight. Sooner or later one of us will be killed, and then you will know that we exist.”36

  He didn’t know that it would be him. The association that bears his name continues to fight racism and maltreatment of asylum seekers when and where it can. They sponsor a group called Other Horizons, which turned Pupetta’s villa into a tailor shop called Casa di Alice (House of Alice) where Italian and African women work together to create “Made in Castel Volturno” clothing with Italian-inspired designs and African fabrics. The tailor shop is also an homage to those killed at the Ob Ob Exotic Fashions tailor shop in 2008, which is discussed in the next chapter.

  Each summer, the House of Alice holds fashion shows in Pupetta’s sculpted garden, where gangsters once plotted and celebrated their crimes. Occasionally, Nigerian women who have been rescued from sexual slavery work as models in the show. The house has been stripped of Madame Camorra’s personal decor, but the initials that she had inlaid in gold leaf into the fireplace’s mantelpiece were left intact. A plaque now hangs on that fireplace that says, “The Camorra lost here.”

  Similar plaques adorn a number of buildings in and around the Land of Fires that have been confiscated from the Camorra and handed over to those with better intentions. There are former dairy shops that now produce “mafia-free” buffalo mozzarella and a handful of other legitimate businesses trying to find their footing in an area that has only ever been known for criminality.

  Still, despite the sporadic successes in the battle against organized crime, it would be a stretch to say the Camorra, or any of the other crime syndicates, is losing influence and power in Italy. If anything, their power seems to be growing, now stretching much further north. In many ways, Italy’s Mafia organizations define this country. Prime ministers and judges have been extinguished for standing up to them as often as they have been brought down for colluding with them.

  Inherent corruption, the by-product of a country under the influence of organized crime for decades, is in many ways the fabric of Italian society. It exists in public school playgrounds and multi-national boardrooms in equal measure. I will never forget the day that my son came home from his Italian preschool class asking for pocket change because he had “to pay the boss for permission to play with them” because he was a blue-eyed foreigner.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “It’s just the rule, mom.” I sent the money and only told the administrator about the incident after he had moved on to an international school in first grade. I didn’t want to risk his happiness over some loose change.

  The longer one lives in this country, the more understandable the corruption is. Why do something the correct way, which often consists of wading through thick layers of bureaucracy, when there is always someone offering a shortcut for a small fee? I paid a woman on a scooter the equivalent of $50 to get my fiscal code. The process of getting the paperwork in order would have taken me days. She was back in a few hours, having taken some back door. No doubt the $50 I gave her went to whomever she bribed to get my document fast. I also know a man who will take all of my parking tickets and “make them go away” for a small fee, never mind that I got them fairly or that the money should go to help improve the roads. The idea that getting away with a shortcut is somehow a victory is, of course, why inefficiency reigns and why Italians need to cut corners in the first place. If one generation just did things by the rule of law, it might stop the cycle, but no one teaches that right is better than wrong, primarily because it’s so much harder to do it the right way.

  Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index consistently puts Italy at or near the top of the list of the most corrupt countries in Europe and often in a dead heat with Cuba in the global ranking.37

  Complacency, which has allowed widespread corruption to persist, has nearly ruined the country. People who don’t pay taxes tend to justify it by saying the government is corrupt. But the government is also corrupt because people don’t pay taxes. In 2017, the state-run debt collection agency that collects taxes and fines was closed down because it was charging inordinate late fees and making massive profits. Even Google settled a tax dispute, agreeing to pay Italy €306 million for skirting the law and not paying tax on its revenues in the country.38 Two years earlier, Apple had to pay €318 million under similar circumstances.39 When in Rome, as they say.

  The labor laws are such that it is often impossible to fire people, so no one gets full-time jobs. Those who do often don’t even go to work because they can’t be fired. There are exceptions, of course, and successful businesses that do play by the rules. But there are literally hundreds of stories about people who are paid under the table to punch timecards for those who have never even been to their workstations while those who are paid under the table are the ones doing the work. As Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi once cited the black economy (that exists outside of taxation) as an important part of Italy’s overall GDP, essentially endorsing the continuation of the practice of not paying income tax. The exploitation of young workers, women and the law are as common as pasta.

  Every time there is an earthquake or a flood, corruption is painfully apparent, especially in the construction sector, where building regulations are frequently ignored. When a devastating earthquake hit the city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing more than three hundred people, the s
treets were covered with piles of beach sand that had been used to mix the cement, instead of the more expensive special gravel that is required. When an earthquake hit the Emilia-Romagna area in 2012, Italy’s chief anti-Mafia prosecutor Franco Roberti warned that the Mafia was waiting in the wings to exploit rebuilding efforts. “Post-earthquake reconstruction is historically a delicious morsel for criminal groups and business interests,” he said. Despite this, nothing was really done to ensure that bids weren’t fixed or that Mafia-related businesses weren’t benefitting.

  When another devastating earthquake hit the central Italian region near the town of Amatrice in 2016, a public school that had just been renovated with anti-seismic reinforcements collapsed. Upon further investigation, it was determined that the compliance certificate for the anti-seismic upgrade had been forged. The earthquake struck in the middle of the night during the summer break, but whoever forged that document clearly had no way of knowing an earthquake wouldn’t strike during a busy school day. Nobody cared. So far, no one has even been charged for the forgery that put the lives of hundreds of children at risk.

  In 2014, the discovery of Rome’s so-called Mafia Capitale that apparently ran the capital’s municipal government for many years sent shockwaves across Italy. For months after, Rome’s city services fell apart. Without the Mafia in charge, no one seemed to know where to start to legitimize the city contracts. At least the Mafia had shell companies that collected garbage, swept the streets and cleaned the gutters as a cover for their fake contracts. The vacuum created when the mob was cleaned out brought the city to its knees.40

  The Mafia Capitale had also infiltrated the asylum seeker centers across the country. During the investigation that led to the group members’ arrests, the alleged boss, Salvatore Buzzi, was caught on a wiretap bragging about how much money he made off the backs of the asylum seekers. “Do you have any idea how much I earn on immigrants?” he was heard telling an associate. “Drugs are less profitable.” Buzzi and his associates were sentenced to decades in prison in a trial that ended in 2017, though Italy’s system allows for automatic appeals so the gangsters could serve very little time.