After turning away from a life defined by crime, former mob boss Michael Franzese has found his faith in Jesus Christ. Franzese was born into 20th-century organized crime as the son of the Colombo crime family underboss Sonny Franzese. Over the years, he would rise to a prominent position in the organization as a caporegime.
“My dad took me and my mom one day to my grandmother’s house on Long Island,” Franzese recalled from his youth. “I was probably four or five years old at that point. We hadn’t seen him for a couple of days. . . . He was unshaven. My dad had a very heavy beard. His right-hand guy, who I called Uncle Joey, was out on the porch. He was sitting on the steps, watching like a guard.”
He recounted a time in which his father had to flee their home because of the criminal lifestyle he led. “My dad came in and hugged my mom. He talked to her for a minute, then came over and hugged me… and then he left. It was strange to me. Nobody explained anything to me. But it turned out the family was at war. My dad couldn’t stay home. He was so high-profile that he couldn’t escape it. He was always getting arrested, always getting indicted. We had law enforcement around us all the time. I experienced it in school, I experienced it everywhere. It was my whole life,” he said.
Despite the glorification of the mob in Hollywood, Franzese emphasized that it is a lifestyle predicated on “evil.” He said, “It’s not a romantic life. It’s a bad life. I even say it’s an evil lifestyle, because families are destroyed. . . . My own family was destroyed.”
The life of crime would eventually catch up to Franzese’s father. “My dad got a 50-year prison sentence for allegedly masterminding a nationwide string of bank robberies,” he said. “. . . It was a turning point for me. My dad’s 50 years old. If he doesn’t get out, he’s going to die in prison. I felt an obligation to help him out.”
However, rather than pushing him away from the mob, seeing his father incarcerated drove him into the streets. “I finally said, ‘Dad, I’m not going to school. I’m going to help you. You’re going to die in prison,’” Franzese stated. “That’s when he said to me, ‘If you’re going to be on the street, I want you on the street the right way.'”
Franzese was eventually imprisoned after being convicted as the mastermind behind a gasoline tax scheme. During his time in prison, he found a Bible and discovered that, by the 1990s, he had become a different man. The former mob boss departed from his previous life and became a born-again Christian.
“My wife is a strong Christian,” he noted. “My mother-in-law was a very strong Christian . . . I read that Bible inside and out . . . I came to the conclusion that Christianity was true and real. The church that married my wife and me, the pastor, and all the people there rallied behind her and my babies at the time. They sent me books to prison. They were just very good to my family. It gave me something new to believe in. It gave me hope.”
Illustrating the importance of his faith in Jesus Christ, Franzese said, “The bottom line is I believe in Christianity – 100%.” Acknowledging his imperfections, he continued, “I’m not the best Christian, but my faith is rock-solid. Nobody can change that for me.”
Featured image credit: Jens Astrup/Play the Game, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michael_Franzese_PTG_Astrup_2009_crop.jpg