MONTREAL - Funeral services will be held for Vito Rizzuto Monday at 12:30 p.m. at Notre-Dâme-de-la-Défense Church at 6800 Henri-Julien Ave., in Little Italy.
Rizzuto, 67, died of natural causes on Monday Dec. 23 after spending most of his adult life as a powerful mob boss.
The service will take place in the same church which held funerals for his son Nick Jr. in January 2010 and father Nick Sr. on November 15, 2010. Vito attended neither, as he was serving five-and-a-half-years in prison in Colorado at the time.
Visitation will take place Sunday at the Loreto Funeral Complex at 4975 des Grandes Prairies in St-Leonard, a complex reportedly owned by close relatives of the deceased.
The church, also known as Madonna della Difesa, is a landmark at the east end of Dante St. and has a capacity of about 800.
The church has held many past funerals of individuals with ties ot the underworld, including Frank Cotroni, who died in 2004 of brain cancer and his brother Vic Cotroni, whose funeral at the church included a 17 piece brass brand and 23 cars of floral arrangements.
Not all of those with ties to the local Mafia have chosen to conduct funeral services at the church. Salvatore Montagna, who was gunned down in a recent Mafia dispute, was buried at the Notre Dame de Pompeii Church on Sauve St. E. in November of 2011 and Agostino Cuntrera, a close associate of the Rizzutos, had a funeral service at the Notre Dame du Mont Carmel Church in St. Leonard.
In other cities, Catholic churches have occasionally been known to deny funeral services to organized crime figures by invoking Canon Law 1184.
Such American Mafia figures as John Gotti, Paul Castellano, Carmine Galante and Frank DeCicco were turned down on those grounds as was Johnny Papalia in Hamilton, Ontario.
