VATICAN CITY — This coming Friday, Pope Francis is slated to preside over a prayer vigil for victims of mafia violence and their families, which takes place the night before the national day commemorating the lives lost.

“For the families of innocent victims, this meeting with the Pope is a gift,” Father Luigi Ciotti expressed in a March 15 article on the Vatican Radio website.

“The availability of the Pope to accompany these family members in this moment, laden with suffering but also marked by hope, is a sign of attention and sensitivity, which they seized from the first moment,” he said.

Father Ciotti, an Italian priest from the Archdiocese of Turin, is president of Libera Foundation, which is an organization dedicated to fighting organized crime across Italy and is hosting the March 21 prayer vigil.

Set to take place in Rome at the Church of St. Gregory VII, the event is expected to draw close to 700 family members of mafia victims from all across Italy, who represent the near 15,000 persons who have suffered the loss of a loved one due to mafia violence.

Beginning at 5:30pm, the vigil will conclude at 7pm.

Referring to the Pope’s presence as “an attention to our fragile and wounded humanity,” Father Ciotti noted that it is “also attention to the specific issue of the mafia, of corruption, of the many forms of injustice that deny human rights.”

Founded in 1995 with the goal of encouraging society to fight against organized crime and to promote justice, Libera Foundation, meaning “free,” is compiled of more than 1,500 organizations, groups and schools that are committed to building a political and cultural dynamic that promotes the sense of lawfulness within society.

According to the Transcrime research center, the mafia has its strongest presence in the northwestern and central regions of Italy and is responsible for the majority of the illegal activity in the country, the most important of which include sexual exploitation, firearms trafficking, drugs, counterfeiting, gambling, illegal waste trafficking, illegal tobacco trafficking, usury and extortion.

Transcrime estimates that, combined together, mafia activities generate a turnover of between $24- to $46-plus billion dollars, with an average equivalent to 1.7% of the country’s national GDP.

With the main illegal activities being involvement with drugs, extortions, sexual exploitation and counterfeiting, Transcrime estimates that the annual mafia revenue falls between a minimum of $11.5 to $18 billion dollars.