Bernardo Provenzano, the Mafia Godfather arrested two and a half years ago, has "turned to God" in prison, where he lives "a monastic life" according to an Italian Parliamentary deputy who visited him in his prison cell.

Antonio Missiani, a centre Left deputy, said Provenzano, 75, who is being held in isolation at a high security prison at Novara, spent his days "praying, reading the Bible and writing to his wife and children". The former Mafia "boss of bosses" told his visitor "faith is everything". "It's incredible, he lives like a kind of monk" Mr Missiani said.

Provenzano, whose brutality earned him the Mafia nickname "The Tractor" because he "mowed people down", used a Bible as the code book for his secret messages or "pizzini" to mafiosi henchmen while in hiding. Mafia bosses often profess to be devout Catholics, and Provenzano ended many of his pizzini with the words "May God bless and protect you".

In the pizzini he also uses the words of the Hail Mary prayer as part of the secret code, and sometimes thanks "my adored Jesus Christ" for helping him to evade capture during more than four decades on the run. However anti Mafia investigators believe this refers not to "heavenly messages" but to a Mafia informer in the police who tipped him off before raids.

Mr Missiani said that Provenzano now read the Bible as a source of faith. On the table in his cell were a Bible, a prayer book and an Italian dictionary, next to images of the Virgin Mary and St Padre Pio, Italy's most popular saint.

Provenzano gets up at six in the morning and eats frugally, Mr Missiani told La Repubblica, with no alcohol, coffee or cigarettes, and tap water rather than mineral water. "He has iron self-discipline", he said. His main indulgence was television. "He never misses the evening news, and watches current affairs documentaries".

Provenzano, who became the Godfather after the arrest of Toto Riina in 1993, had been on the run since 1963, when he was first wanted by police for murder. In 2002 he none the less travelled to Marseilles under an assumed name for a prostate operation. He was finally captured in April 2006 at a delapidated farmhouse near his home town, Corleone, after police tracked a delivery of clean laundry to him from his wife.