It's been well documented that after WWII, Vatican elements operated the “ratline” that helped fascists subject to prosecution for war crimes flee the allied dragnet. In many cases the escapees paid for the assistance. Among those who escaped were the ruthless Fuhrer of the Balkans, Pavelic, as well as Mengele, Barbie and Eichmann.
Organized crime flourished in Italy/Sicily after a long series of unstable Italian governments. [Does this sound familiar to the rise of criminal oligarchs in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union?].
After WWII Italy/Sicily criminal organizations, known as "Cosa Nostra" or "Mafia," were helped by the Catholic church to expand their operations on an international basis, including to the United States.
J. Edgar Hoover was curiously reluctant to even acknowledge the existence of organized crime in the US, and it became more deeply entrenched itself into American and especially Italian life at multiple levels (Rodney 1977, Hammer 1982, Arlacchi 1983, Gambetta 1993, Schneider and Schneider 2003).
The Economist magazine featured an article in 2017 proudly proclaiming how the Church was finally severing its ties with the mob [yeah, right].
https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2017/12/15/the-italian-church-is-dissolving-its-links-to-the-mob
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/02/the-understold-story-the-vatican-the-mob-super-ponzi-schemes-and-more/