Livatino was born in Canicattì, 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 served as vice-director in the Register Office in Agrigento. In 1978, after being among the top percentage in the Judiciary audit, he was assigned a post as magistrate at the court at Caltanissetta.
In 1979 he became "sostituto procuratore" (deputy prosecutor) at the Agrigento court, a position he kept until 1989, when he was appointed assistant judge (giudice a latere). He was murdered on 21 September 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.[1]
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.
Pope John Paul II said that Rosario Livatino was a "Martyr of Justice and in an indirect way, of the Christian Faith".[2]
In December 2020, Pope Francis approved the decree of martyrdom proposed by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Servant of God Rosario Angelo Livatino was officially proclaimed Blessed on Sunday, 9 May 2021, in the Cathedral of Agrigento, Sicily by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints on the same day that John Paul II, in 1993, in the Valley of the Temples, addressed his determined call to the Mafia: "Be converted! one day the judgment of God will come![3]
