Rosario Livatino

Biography

Livatino was born in Canicattì, in Sicily. After successfully completing high school, he entered the university Law Faculty in Palermo in 1971, and graduated in 1975. Between 1977 and 1978 he serviced as vice-director in the Register Office in Agrigento. In 1978, after being among the top percentage in the Judiciary audit, he got a position as magistrate at the court at Caltanissetta.

In 1979 he became "sostituto procuratore" (deputy prosecutor) in the Agrigento court, a position he kept until 1989, when he was appointed assistant judge (giudice a latere). He was murdered on September 21, 1990, along route SS 640 by four killers, as he travelled without bodyguard to the court. The assassins had been paid by the "Stidda" of Agrigento, a criminal organization similar to the more famous Cosa Nostra.

During his career, Livatino worked against corruption, and gained success in a number of cases, obtaining the seizure of large sums of money and property and the arrest of senior figures in organised crime.

His story inspired a novel, Il giudice ragazzino ("The Boy Judge"), written by Nando Dalla Chiesa in 1992, and this was made into a film with the same title in 1994 by director Alessandro di Robilant.

Beatification process

In 1993 the Bishop of Agrigento asked Rosario Livatino's former teacher, Ida Abate, to collect any available testimony for Livatino's beatification. One person, Elena Valdetara, who claims to have been cured of a severe form of leukemia, thanks to the miraculous intervention of the judge, who appeared her in a dream dressed in priestly robes and asked her to find in herself the force in order to defeat the disease.

Pope John Paul II said that Rosario Livatino was a Martyr of Justice and in an indirect way, of the Christian Faith.