CASSANO ALL’JONIO, Italy — Pope Francis journeyed Saturday to the heart of Italy’s biggest crime syndicate, met the father of a 3-year-old boy slain in the region’s drug war, and declared that all mobsters are automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

During his one-day pilgrimage to the southern region of Calabria, Francis comforted the imprisoned father of Nicola Campolongo in the courtyard of a prison in the town of Castrovillari.

In January the boy was shot, along with one of his grandfathers and the grandfather’s girlfriend, in an attack blamed on drug turf wars in the nearby town of Cassano all’Jonio. The attackers torched the car with all three victims inside.

The boy’s father and mother already were in jail at the time on drug trafficking charges. The pope had expressed his horror after the attack and promised to visit the town.

Francis embraced the man. He asked the pope to pray for the boy’s mother, who was permitted to leave prison after her son’s slaying and remains under house arrest. The pope also met two of the boy’s grandmothers.

A Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said Francis told the father: “May children never again have to suffer in this way.”

“The two grandmothers were weeping like fountains,” Benedettini added.

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