Vatican, Mafia | featured news

If the papal conclave were set up like college basketball's March Madness, Cardinal Angelo Scola would have been the overall No. 1 seed — perhaps until today. He is the archbishop of Milan and has long been seen as a safe pick for the next pope, having won favor among American cardinals and a handful of influential European ones. So what stands in his way? Well, there's that pesky anti-mafia investigation he has to deal with. The Guardian's John Hooper and Lizzie Davies report today that anti-mafia detectives are investigating corruption in the health-care system of Lombardy, the Italian region of which Milan is the capital. And Scola is very much intertwined with the most powerful man behind it all...