The "kid judge" will be blessed. Rosario Livatino, magistrate of Agrigento, killed by the mafia at 37 will be beatified. The decision is made by Pope Francis and comes a few years after the start of the beatification process wanted by the archbishop of Catanzaro, Monsignor Vincenzo Bertolone, from Agrigento and Postulator of the cause. Livatino will be considered a martyr in "Odium fidei".
Who was Rosario Livatino
Born in Canicattì in the province of Agrigento in 1952, he was the son of Vincenzo Livatino, an employee of the municipal tax collector, and of Rosalia Corbo. Engaged during the years of high school also in Catholic Action, he graduated from the Faculty of Law in Palermo. After winning the competition to enter the Italian judiciary I start working to the ordinary court of Caltanissetta. From that period began the years of work then at the court of Agrigento. But his life was broken at the age of 37 on 21 September 1990 in Agrigento on the SS 640. Four men from the Agrigento "Stidda" killed him. Livatino was alone in his car, he didn't have an escort. He tried to escape on foot but was reached and shot dead by the assassins.
Livatino's commitment in the fight against the mafia
Despite his young age, Livatino was able in a short time to start investigations against the mafia Agrigento. Enough to be targeted by local criminals. And one of the instigators of the murder testified during the second phase of the beatification process. In fact, it would have emerged that whoever ordered that crime knew how upright, just and attached to the faith Livatino was. Other local exponents of the Cosa Nostra seem to have argued that Livatino was a man of faith. So much so that he was labeled as a "fool", a bigoted "holy man", because he attended a parish. One of the four perpetrators of the crime, Gaetano Puzzangaro, had also testified for the beatification process. Among other things, on TV he said he was “absolutely repentant inwardly for that gesture made in his youth; that morning I hoped with all my heart that Doctor Livatino would take another path ”.
The beatification of the judge
After the pontiff's decision, the ceremony is now awaited, which could take place next year in Agrigento. The header of the decree reads as follows "the martyrdom of the Servant of God Rosario Angelo Livatino, lay faithful; born on October 3, 1952 in Canicattì (Italy) and killed, in hatred of the Faith, on the road that leads from Canicattì to Agrigento (Italy), on September 21, 1990 ". The cause of beatification opened in 2011. But already John Paul II in 1993 meeting his parents in Agrigento had defined him as "a martyr of justice and indirectly of the faith".
Pope Bergoglio praised the figure of the magistrate. In 2019, during a meeting with the representatives of the "Rosario Livatino Study Center", he defined it "an example not only for the magistrates, but for all those who work in the field of law: for the consistency between his faith and his commitment to work, and for the topicality of his reflections ".
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