Italy: beatification of Judge Rosario Livatino, assassinated by the Sicilian Mafia
A photo of the late magistrate Rosario Livatino during the beatification ceremony at the cathedral in Agrigento, southern Italy, on May 9, 2021. AP - Fabio Peonia
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
In Italy, an anti-Mafia judge was beatified this Sunday in Agrigento in Sicily.
Rosario Livatino was 38 when he was assassinated on September 21, 1990 not far from his home.
He is the first magistrate declared “blessed” in the history of the Church.
Publicity
Read more
Agrigento was adorned in white this Sunday to celebrate one of its heroes.
In the city's cathedral, where his bloody shirt had been placed in a reliquary, Cardinal Semeraro, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints celebrated a solemn mass elevating Rosario Livatino to the rank of “blessed”, reports our correspondent at Rome,
Éric Sénanque.
Murdered by a mafia commando on a motorcycle, Livatino had always refused an escort, believing to be protected by God. When the police arrived at the place where he was lying, his head exploded, they found his diary, with the initials "STD" written on the first page, like all his files. This is the ancient invocation
Sub tutela Dei
(Under the protection of God) used by magistrates in the Middle Ages before making official decisions.
Rosario Livatino went to church every morning before going to court. He begged God for forgiveness for the risks he was exposing his parents to. “
To do justice
”, he wrote, “
is like praying and dedicating one's life to God
”. The judge had left his fiancée two years earlier, with her consent. A missionary of justice, he had let his sorry parents understand, cannot lead a wife and a family on his adventure.
This devout Catholic was among the first Italian magistrates to seize property held by Mafia clans.
Livatino has remained very popular in Sicily and throughout Italy.
Today a youth cooperative that cultivates confiscated property in Cosa Nostra bears his name.
Three years after his murder, John Paul II, when he met his parents had described him as "a
martyr of justice and indirectly of the faith
".
This Sunday, Pope Francis, who rose up against the Mafia several times, had the new “blessed” applauded by the faithful in Rome.
"May his example be for all, and especially for magistrates, an encouragement to be loyal defenders of legality and freedom"
launched the Argentine Pope.
►
To read also: Nicola Gratteri, the man who drags the most powerful Italian mafia to justice
• Italy remains plagued by the Sicilian Mafia
The Sicilian mafia, Cosa Nostra, is much less powerful than in the 1980s and 1990s, but it remains one of the most formidable criminal organizations with tentacles that spread all over the world and a capacity for territorial control against which the institutions struggle to struggle.
According to the estimates of the national anti-mafia direction, it would achieve an annual turnover of more than 30 billion euros.
One of the very last Sicilian entrepreneurs to denounce a Cosa Nostra clan, which threatened them with death for refusing to pay the pizzo - the Mafia tax - is the famous nougat maker, Giuseppe Condorelli, reports our correspondent in Rome,
Anne Le Nir
.
Although several associations fight against racketeering, this activity still represents a means favored by the Sicilian mafia to control the territory.
According to the national anti-mafia leadership, Cosa Nostra has more than 5,000 affiliates to its clans, strongly rooted in Sicily, with political and administrative powers of influence.
But its activities, such as drug and arms trafficking and the recycling of dirty money, extend far beyond national borders.
Since the death of Bernardo Provenzano in 2016, the supreme leader of this criminal organization is
Matteo Messina Denaro
, 62 years old.
He has been Italy's most wanted man for 28 years.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Italy
Criminality
Religion
Pope Francis