Judge Rosario Livatino, murdered in Agrigento on 21 September 1990, at the age of 37, by the Mafia members of the 'Stidda' will be blessed.
Di Livatino, born in Canicattì on October 3, 1952, the Holy See has in fact recognized martyrdom "in odium fidei" (in hatred of the faith).
This is the content of a decree the promulgation of which Pope Francis authorized, during an audience with Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
The heading of the decree states exactly that "the martyrdom of the Servant of God Rosario Angelo Livatino, a lay faithful; born on 3 October 1952 in Canicattì (Italy) and killed, in hatred of the Faith, on the road that leads from Canicattì to Agrigento (Italy), on 21 September 1990 ".
The proof of the martyrdom "in odium fidei" of the young Sicilian judge, according to sources close to the cause, came also thanks to the statements made by one of the four instigators of the murder, who testified during the second phase of the beatification process (carried out by the archbishop of Catanzaro, Monsignor Vincenzo Bertolone, from Agrigento and Postulator of the cause) and thanks to which it emerged that whoever ordered that crime knew how upright, just and attached to the faith Livatino was and that for this reason, he could not be an interlocutor of the crime.
He was therefore killed.
It is no coincidence that, as emerges from the judgments of the trials on the death of the judge, important local exponents of the Cosa Nostra, when Livatino was still alive, labeled him as "a fool", a "santocchio" (a bigot) because he attended assiduously the parish of San Domenico, a few steps from the house where he lived with his parents.
A testimony from the principal, given to News Mediaset, which was decisive as well as that of one of the four material perpetrators of the crime, Gaetano Puzzangaro, who that 21 September was driving the car that rammed the car of the "boy judge" and who had already in the past decided to issue some declarations for the diocesan phase of the process.
Puzzangaro also found the courage to expose himself publicly and interviewed by Tgcom24 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".
After his death in 1993, John Paul II, meeting his parents in Agrigento, defined Livatino as "a martyr of justice and indirectly of the faith".
Even Pope Francis, who strongly supported the cause of beatification opened in 2011, praised the figure of the magistrate: meeting the members of the "Centro Studi Rosario Livatino" in November 2019, he called him "an example not only for the magistrates, but for all those who work in the field of law: for the coherence between his faith and his commitment to work, and for the relevance of his reflections ".
Rosario Livatino's beatification ceremony could take place in the spring of 2021 in Agrigento.
