Pope’s Cry: ‘Do Not Kill’

Pope John Paul II exhorted the overseers of Italian Catholicism Thursday to renew Italy’s flagging faith and added a “cry from my heart” to the Mafia: “Do not kill!”

Speaking to a Catholic Church convention, John Paul praised recent grass roots efforts to push for a “culture of morality, legality and solidarity.”

Such a commitment can help “uproot the evil planted by organized crime,” the pontiff said during a day-long visit to Sicily, his fifth to the Mafia-plagued region.

“I cannot but repeat … the cry from my heart at Agrigento at the Valley of the Temples:

“‘Do not kill! No man, no human association, no Mafia can change or trample the right to life, this most sacred right of God!”’