Because family is at the heart of the Mafia
The image of a saint was often burned in the initiation ritual into the mafia. The feast day of Saint Isidore, patron of labrorers, is 15 May. When the pioneering labor organizer Bernardino Verro joined the Mafia in the spring of 1893, he was inducted through a ritual involving his own blood, and the burning... Continue Reading →
"Mafia" is a feminine term that means beautiful and proud. Paradoxically, women are both essential to and excluded from the criminal organization. At the turn of the twentieth century, the mafia in Corleone was led by members of a new agrarian bourgeoisie (“nuova borghesia agraria”) of estate managers for absentee landlords. Author and labor organizer Dino Paternostro... Continue Reading →
Cousin marriage, and double in-law marriages, reinforced familial bonds among the Fratuzzi of Corleone.
Founders of two of the Five Families of New York, Giuseppe Morello and Gaetano Reina, came from Corleone around the same time as my great-grandparents. They're also family.
Mafia Genealogy 