Editor's note: John Dickie is the author of several books on the mafia, including "Cosa Nostra: A History of the Sicilian Mafia." He is a Professor of Italian Studies at University College London.
(CNN) -- "I don't know if organized criminals have the capability to do something to the Pope. But they are certainly thinking about it."
These words, uttered in a recent interview by an Italian anti-Mafia prosecutor, don't quite justify the alarming worldwide headlines they provoked, but at the same time it would be rash to dismiss them out of hand.
The new Pope represents a serious threat to some established criminal interests at a critical moment in the long history of the Mafias' relationship with Catholicism -- a past marked by both intimacy and violence.