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BL. ROSARIO LIVATINO, MARTYR - 21 SEPTEMBER

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN SEPTEMBER

Saints celebrated on the 21st of September

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

BL. ROSARIO LIVATINO, MARTYR 

An Italian judge who was killed by gunmen in the Sicilian mafia in 1990 will be beatified as a martyr, the Vatican has announced. In a decree of martyrdom published on Tuesday, Pope Francis wrote that Rosario Livatino had been murdered for his faith, and likened his killing to a hate crime against the Catholic faith.

Known as the "boy judge" because he looked younger than his 37 years, Livatino had led many investigations into the mob at a time when Sicilian clans were involved in a full-blown war.

The bosses of la Stidda (the star), a mafia criminal group operating in the central-southern part of Sicily, ordered Livatino’s death because he would not bow down to the mobsters and continued to investigate their affairs.

As numerous witnesses testified during a later trial, Livatino was also mocked by the mafia, who considered him a "bigoted" because he was a regular churchgoer and a fervent believer.

On September 21, 1990, as Livatino drove his Ford Fiesta along the Agrigento highway, he was rammed by another car and forced to stop. Livatino tried to escape on foot across the fields but the four killers caught up with him and shot him dead.

During the investigation, the prosecutors noted that, in all his diaries, Livatino wrote a mysterious abbreviation: "s.t.d.", which they later understood to be the Latin acronym for sub tutela dei (in the hands of God).

After his death, John Paul II described Livatino as “a martyr of justice and faith”.

Pope Francis, who strongly supported the case for beatification, has called Livatino "an example, not only for the magistrates but for all those who work in the field of law – for the consistency between his faith, his commitment to work and for the relevance of his reflections".

The decree of martyrdom proposed by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints and approved by the pope means there is no need for a miracle to be attributed to Livatino’s intercession with God for him to be beatified.

[Bl. Rosario was beatified on May 9, 2021]

(From an article in the Guardian, December 22, 2020 -

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/22/italian-judge-killed-sicilian-mafia-beatified-martyr-pope-francis-rosario-livatino-catholic)



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