A "MOE: AL pact of nonaggression— negotiated by a cardinal between two feuding families in Brazil's rural Northeast has been broken and has spread to th e major coastal city of Rio de Janeiro.
The 32'ear-old feud between the Alencar and Sampaio-Saraiva clans resumed at the end of October when Antonio Saraiva was murdered in Rio de Janiero. Saraiva, 37,, was killed as he left his home when a car pulled up and a passenger fired at him with a shotgun. About a week later the body of J ose Roberto Sarto Alencar, 67., also a resident of Rio de Janeiro, was found dead with four bullet holes in it.
The feud. mostly over political and economic control of the Tiny inland town of Exu, has claimed about 30 lives since it began in 1949.
Earlier this year Cardinal Avelar Brandao Vielela of Salvador negotiated the moral non-aggression pact and travelled to Exu to preside at the signing of the truce by, the heads of the feuding clans. At the time, 27 people had been killed and IS wounded in the feud.
After the murders in Rio de Janeiro, Cardinal Brandao said that he was disillusioned and the families leaders were not worthy of the pact." But he noted that neither murder may have resulted from the feud, but from the "growing violence in Rio itself."
• In Sicily another cardinal is also making a plea for an end to violence.
"The church of Palermo is mobilizing iitself against the climate of death which day after day burdens tine life of our city" because of Mafia violence, a statement by 1, he chancery office of the Archdiocese of Palermo said.
Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo of Palermo presided at a special Mass on Sunday, the feast of Christ the King. to beg God's assistance in "halting the Mafiaconnected violence which has plsaued the city for the last year. Palermo prosecutor's offict...,ays that the Sicilian Mafia directs an estimated year business in drug traffic, much of it inaniving deals with US Mafia groups. A bloody battle among Mafia factions for control of the drug traffic has claimed 85 lives in Palermo this year.