MARTYR FOR JUSTICE

 

Recently, one of our ex- interns was here for a visit.  He is studying law at Notre Dame and talked of the difficulties he sees in our country today and the often unfairness of law and how he struggles to find a balance between his studies and his spiritual life.  I told him he needed a patron saint to help him and found this amazing saint.

BL. ROSARIO ANGELO LIVATINO was the son of Vincenzo Livatino and Rosalia Corbo was born in Scicily in 1952.  Rosario was an excellent student all his life, always getting top marks, and graduating with honors from the law school of the University of Palermo in 1975. After working in several legal civil service positions, in 1979 he became Deputy Public Prosecutor in Agrigento, concentrating on fighting organized crime. In 1959  he was elevated to the bench, serving as a judge in the court of Agrigento. While a personally pious man, Rosario never wanted to join any clubs or associations, Church or secular, and never married. 

Bl. Rosario worked as a prosecutor in Sicily dealing with the criminal activity of the mafia throughout the 1980s. He confronted what Italians later called the “Tangentopoli,” the corrupt system of mafia bribes and kickbacks given for public works contracts.

 At the age of 37, he served as a judge at the Court of Agrigento.

He was driving unescorted toward the Agrigento courthouse when another car hit his vehicle, sending him off the road. He ran from the crashed vehicle into a field, but was shot in the back and then killed with more gunshots by young men paid by two Sicilian organized crime groups, the Stidda and Cosa Nostra.

Today a plaque on the highway marks the spot where Rosario was killed. It reads: “Martyr of justice.” On Dec. 21, 2020 Pope Francis elevated this title when he recognized the judge as a martyr killed “in hatred of the faith.”

His legal legacy lives on through the work of the Rosario Livatino Study Center, which is dedicated to issues of life, the family, and religious freedom.

At his beatification in May 2021, Pope Francis said: “To Rosario Angelo Livatino,  through his beatification, we give thanks for the example he leaves us, for having fought every day the good fight of faith with humility, meekness and mercy. Livatino did everything “always and only in the name of Christ, without ever abandoning faith and justice, even in the imminent risk of death. This is the seed that was planted, this is the fruit that will come.”

“He always placed his work ‘under the protection of God;’ for this he became a witness of the Gospel until his heroic death. May his example be for everyone, especially magistrates, an incentive to be loyal defenders of the law and liberty.”

 A relic of the Blessed, a shirt stained with his dried blood from the day of his murder, was venerated at the Mass in a transparent reliquary.

 His feast day will be Oct. 29. He is the patron of lawyers.