Vatican eyes getting tough on mobsters

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has long railed against corruption and the mafia, but now the Vatican is considering developing a doctrine around excommunicating corrupt and mafia-tinged Catholics.

The Vatican last week hosted its first conference on corruption and organized crime, inviting 50 prosecutors, U.N. officials, bishops and victims of organized crime for a day of talks.

Organizers said in a statement Saturday that the time had come to develop a new legal doctrine for the Catholic Church around “the question of excommunication for corruption and mafia association.”

Excommunication is one of the most severe penalties in the Catholic Church, with the guilty party forbidden from participating in the sacraments.

Death sentences in Egypt: An Egyptian criminal court has sentenced to death 31 Islamists for their part in the June 2015 assassination of the country’s top prosecutor, Hisham Barakat. Saturday’s ruling, pronounced by Judge Hassan Farid, referred the case of the 31 to the country’s top theologian to solicit his nonbinding opinion on the death sentences, a formality followed by courts in the case of capital punishment. The court will reconvene July 22 to reaffirm the death sentences. Barakat is the most senior government official killed by Islamic militants since the 2013 ouster by the military of the Islamist Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president whose one-year rule proved to be divisive.