cultural heritage such as the Uffizi Gallery. The Catholic Church openly condemned the Mafia, and two churches were bombed and an anti-Mafia priest shot dead in Rome. The choice to hit cultural and church targets was partly to destabilize the government, but also because the Mafia felt that the Roman Catholic Church had abrogated an unwritten hands-off policy toward traditional organized crime in Southern Italy. After Riina's capture, leadership of the Mafia was briefly held by Leoluca Bagarella, then passed to Bernardo Provenzano when Bagarella was captured in 1995. Provenzano halted the campaign of violence and replaced it with a campaign of quietness known as Pax Mafiosa. Provenzano years Under Bernardo Provenzano's leadership, murders of state officials were halted. He also halted the policy of murdering informants and their families, with a view instead to getting them to retract their testimonies and return to the fold. He also restored the common support fund for imprisoned mafiosi. The tide of defectors was greatly stemmed. The Mafia preferred to initiate relatives of existing mafiosi, believing them to be less prone to defection. Provenzano was arrested in 2006, after 43 years on the run. His successor as boss was Matteo Messina Denaro, who was arrested only in 2023. Modern Mafia in Italy The incarcerated bosses are currently subjected to strict controls on their contact with the outside world, limiting their ability to run their operations from behind bars under the article 41-bis prison regime. Antonino Giuffrè is a close confidant of Provenzano who turned pentito shortly after his capture in 2002. He alleges that Cosa Nostra had direct contact in 1993 with representatives of Silvio Berlusconi who was then planning the birth of Forza Italia. The alleged deal included a repeal of 41 bis, among other anti-Mafia laws, in return for electoral support in Sicily. Nevertheless, Giuffrè's declarations have not yet been confirmed. The Italian Parliament reinforced the provisions of the 41 bis, with the full support of Forza Italia. The bill was to expire in 2002 but has been prolonged for another four years and extended to other crimes such as terrorism. However, according to one of Italy's leading magazines L'Espresso, 119 mafiosi have been released on an individual basis – one-fifth of those incarcerated under the 41 bis regime. The human rights group Amnesty International has expressed concern that the 41-bis regime could, in some circumstances, amount to "cruel, inhumane or