The Catholic Church beatified the Italian judge Rosary Livatino, murdered in 1990 by the mafia in Agrigento, Sicily, Italy.
Livatino, who would be 69 years old today, was murdered on September 21, 1990 by 'Cosa Nostra' and the Catholic Church beatified him as an example of legality and integrity.
Pope Francis, after praying the 'Regina Coelli' prayer, remembered Livatino as a “martyr of justice and faith, in his service to the community as an upright judge, who never allowed himself to be corrupted and who judged not to condemn, but to redeem".
“May it be for everyone, and especially for judges, a stimulus to be defenders of legality and freedom”, added Francisco.
The pandemic prevented a beatification attended by crowds and only 200 people were able to be present at the cathedral in Agrigento, Sicily, for the ceremony in which the judge's blood-stained shirt, one of the pieces of evidence in the trials in Caltanissetta, was shown as a relic. , against the perpetrators of the homicide.
The “young judge”, as he was known in Italy since his death at the age of 26, is the first magistrate in the history of the Church to be beatified, having been declared “martyr of hatred of faith“, which allows him to be beatified without having to have a miracle approved through his intercession.
A fervent Catholic, he tried throughout his life to recover mobsters. Some criminals explained that when they entered his office, the judge stood up and shook their hands and that he once prayed next to the body of a murdered mobster.
“May God be with me and help me to respect the oath, and to behave as the education that my parents gave me requires”, wrote Rosario Livatino in her notebook on the first day she accessed the magistracy in Agrigento.
On September 21, 1990, as he did every morning, he was on his way to court from Canicattì, where he lived with his parents, and as he was crossing the viaduct on state road 640, a motorbike approached him and a Fiat Punto crossed him. if on the way. After the first shots, he tried to escape, but one of the killers shot him seven times.
The perpetrators of the murder and those who ordered his death were convicted, thanks to testimonies such as that of the merchant Pietro Nava, who later had to change his name and life, like his family.
One of the murderers, Gaetano Puzzagaro, repented in prison, and his was one of the testimonies collected with a view to beatification. According to him, Livatino's last words were: “Boy, what have I done to you?”
The mafiosi considered the judge inaccessible, irreducible in attempts at corruption, precisely because he was a practicing Catholic and they initially intended to kill him in front of the church where he went to pray.
His investigations into the war between mafias, which resulted in hundreds of deaths, between the so-called 'Stidda' and the 'Cosa Nostra', cost him his life, as the two joined together to kill him.
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