“When we die, no one will ask us how much we believed, but whether we were credible.” This is the spiritual and intellectual testament of Judge Rosario Livatino, killed by four hitmen from the Stidda (a mafia organization opposed to Cosa Nostra) on September 21, 1990.
Livatino was beatified on May 9, 2021, and is commemorated by the Church on October 29; his life teaches us the value of consistency and credibility, and the value of justice lived in the closest union with faith.
Justice and charity
Livatino was born in Canicattì, in the province of Agrigento, on October 3, 1952, and devoted his life to study (he earned a law degree in Palermo in 1975, at the age of 22) and involvement in Catholic Action.
His day was woven with prayer: he always began by stopping at a secluded little church, where the judge gathered himself in dialogue with God before going to work.
On his desk at home stood a crucifix and a Gospel filled with annotations: “Justice,” he wrote, “is necessary but not sufficient, and can and must be surpassed by the law of charity.”
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“Better for one person to die”
When he joined the judiciary, fulfilling his life’s dream, he became a deputy prosecutor at the Agrigento court and thus also handled the most delicate anti-mafia investigations, beginning to dismantle the “Sicilian bribes scandal” and clashing with the Agrigento mafia.
He himself asked to be entrusted with a difficult mafia investigation because he was the only one among Agrigento’s deputy prosecutors without a family: with complete trust, he placed himself in God’s hands (“Sub Tutela Dei”, he noted in his diary).
The deadly ambush took place on SS640 between Agrigento and Caltanissetta. The judge knew he was in the crosshairs, but, despite knowing he was in danger, he had not wanted a police escort, because, according to his father’s testimony, his thinking was: “Better for one person to die than for more.”
Pope Saint John Paul II described him as “a martyr for justice and indirectly for the faith”.
Our commitment
The life and testimony of Judge Livatino call all of us to commitment because, as Cardinal Montenegro said on the occasion of the commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death, “the mafia is not only the kind responsible for massacres, but also the kind characterized by silence, injustice, favoritism, and shortcuts at the expense of the weakest. This mafia also kills. May the anniversary of Livatino’s death inspire in us a surge of civic and religious pride.”
Let us commit ourselves to this fight against injustice, which is also a testimony of faith!
