“It was a mild morning in the gentle Sicilian autumn of September 21, 1990, when Livatino, having placed in his briefcase the case files he had worked on until late at night, set off for the Agrigento courthouse in his burgundy-red Ford Fiesta. A commando of four men from the Stidda Mafia clan was waiting for him on the expressway and immediately opened fire. Rosario, wounded in the shoulder, tried to flee but was chased and caught at the bottom of the embankment, where one of the assassins continued firing pistol shots at him. To his anguished question, ‘What have I done to you?’, the answer was a point-blank shot to the face. A powerful wave of emotion swept through the country, which discovered the story of this simple man and his life as a rigorous and reserved judge, his unblemished face and clear gaze. Thus he became, and would forever remain for everyone, the ‘boy judge.’”

Who was Rosario Livatino? His personality is well conveyed by a detail from the investigation. On one page of his diary and in some of his other writings, the initials “S.T.D.” were found: the three letters were a real puzzle for cryptographers, and every attempt by experts to decipher them was unsuccessful. The explanation was found in his Catholic faith. With those initials, sub tutela Dei, Rosario invoked divine assistance in his daily work as a judge. In any case, his writings also clearly reveal his lofty conception of justice and of a judge’s duties.

The words spoken by John Paul II during his pastoral visit to Sicily on May 9, 1993, remain unforgettable. After meeting Rosario’s family, he issued his terrible anathema against the Mafia, urging its members to convert. John Paul II described him as “a martyr of justice and, indirectly, of the faith”: a judge, a man who united a profound faith with a secular conception of his role. His words still sound relevant today: “You will not be asked whether you were believers, but whether you were credible.”

These words by Pietro Grasso, former president of the Senate of the Republic, taken from the book “Rosario Livatino. A Holy Judge” (code 8821), outline the figure of Rosario Livatino, who was proclaimed blessed on May 9 in Agrigento Cathedral in the presence of Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints. He is the first magistrate to be beatified in the history of the Catholic Church.

As Benedict XVI had already decided in the case of Father Pino Puglisi, recognition of martyrdom in odium fidei leads directly to beatification, without the need for a miracle through the candidate’s intercession to be recognized, and is another important sign from the Church against the Mafia.

The book “Rosario Livatino – The Holy Judge”, edited by Domenico Airoma, Avellino’s public prosecutor and vice president of the Livatino Study Center, contains not only a detailed biography of the blessed but also the proceedings of the conference “25 Years Later. Rosario Livatino: Law, Ethics, Faith,” held in Rome on September 18, 2015, in the presence of the highest offices of state, who wished in this way to pay tribute to a man of the highest moral stature.

During the beatification homily, Cardinal Semeraro stated: “Livatino died forgiving his killers, like Jesus. This is the true meaning of his final words, in which we hear an echo of God’s lament: my people, what have I done to you?” Not “a reproach,” nor “a sentence of condemnation,” but “a heartfelt invitation to reflect on one’s actions, to reconsider one’s life—in other words, to convert.”

And Pope Francis also wished to remember the new blessed during the Regina Caeli: “In his service to the community as an incorruptible judge, who never allowed himself to be corrupted, he strove to judge not to condemn but to redeem. His work always placed him under the protection of God, and for this reason he became a witness to the Gospel until his heroic death. May his example be an encouragement to everyone, especially magistrates, to be faithful defenders of legality and freedom. A round of applause for the new blessed!”

Editrice Shalom also joins in the joy over the beatification of Rosario Livatino, having discovered and grown to love his story through the book “Rosario Livatino – A Holy Judge.”