Sister Anna Donelli, a respected nurse from northern Italy, was recently arrested under suspicion of having colluded with a powerful clan of the ‘Ndragheta mafia family.

The arrest of 57-year-old Anna Donelli, a respected nun and recent recipient of the Golden Panettone, an annual Milanese civic award, for her volunteer work in prisons and in the troubled outskirts of cities like Milan, Rome and Brescia, came as a shock for the whole of Italy. On Thursday, Sister Anna and 24 other people were arrested following an investigation into the activities of the ‘Ndragheta in Brescia, with authorities claiming they had strong reasons to believe the nun had been working with the mafia crime family for a long time. As part of her work in several prisons where ‘Ndragheta members were being held, the nun is suspected of facilitating communication between prisoners and the clan’s leaders and solving conflicts and disputes between inmates.

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“Sister Anna Donelli is one of us,” Stefano Tripodi, leader of the Tripodi clan based in Brescia, can be heard telling one of his subordinates in a wiretap recording presented in Court by Italian police. The Tripodi crime family, which operates a junkyard and scrap metal business, has long been associated with the ‘Ndragheta, the most powerful mafia organization in Italy, and one of the most sophisticated in the world.

According to Italian investigators, Sister Anna Donelli used her volunteer work in prisons to facilitate communication between Stefano Tripodi and his imprisoned henchmen. In a conversation recorded by police via wiretap, Tripodi instructs the nun to go to Brescia Prison, approach Candiloro Francesco, an inmate imprisoned for organized crime crimes, and stay with him until no one else was around before introducing herself as a “friend of Stefano’s”.

 

Thanks to her work as a spiritual assistant, Sister Anna was able to bypass the Italian prisons’ ban on communication (even with family members) for convicted mafia members and associates, and her reputation within the community helped her avoid suspicion. The information she conveyed to inmates or received from them helped the Tripodi gang better plan criminal activities, react to criminal investigations, and manage prison disputes.

Sister Anna Donelli became a nun at the age of 21, after going through a difficult childhood, and began volunteering in prisons and on the dangerous outskirts of various Italian cities in 2010. She was very well-respectd both among her peers and the Italian society at large and was even featured on television programs for her work. Now she stands accused of colluding with dangerous criminals and has been placed under house arrest.