Vatican City, Dec 22, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of Rosario Livatino, a judge who was brutally killed by the mafia on his commute to work at a courthouse in Sicily thirty years ago.
The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints announced Dec. 22 that the pope had approved a decree of Livatino’s martyrdom “in hatred of the faith,” paving the way for the judge’s beatification.
Before his murder at the age of 37 on Sept. 21, 1990, Livatino spoke as a young lawyer about the intersection between the law and faith.
“The duty of the magistrate is to decide; however, to decide is also to choose… And it is precisely in this choosing in order to decide, in deciding so as to put things in order, that the judge who believes may find a relationship with God. It is a direct relationship, because to administer justice is to realize oneself, to pray, to dedicate oneself to God. It is an indirect relationship, mediated by love for the person under judgment,” Livatino said at a conference in 1986.
“However, believers and non-believers must, in the moment of judging, dismiss all vanity and above all pride; they must feel the full weight of power entrusted to their hands, a weight all the greater because power is exercised in freedom and autonomy. And this task will be the lighter the more the judge humbly senses his own weaknesses,” he said.
Livatino’s convictions about his vocation within the legal profession and commitment to justice were tested at a time when the mafia demanded a weak judiciary in Sicily.
For a decade he worked as a prosecutor dealing with the criminal activity of the mafia throughout the 1980s and confronted what Italians later called the “Tangentopoli,” or the corrupt system of mafia bribes and kickbacks given for public works contracts.
Livatino went on to serve as a judge at the Court of Agrigento in 1989. He was driving unescorted toward the Agrigento courthouse when another car hit him, sending him off the road. He ran from the crashed vehicle into a field, but was shot in the back and then killed with more gunshots.
After his death, a Bible full of notations was found in his desk, where he always kept a crucifix.
On a pastoral visit to Sicily in 1993, Pope John Paul II called Livatino a “martyr of justice and indirectly of faith.”
Cardinal Francesco Montenegro, the current archbishop of Agrigento, told Italian media on the 30th anniversary of Livatino’s death that the judge was dedicated “not only to the cause of human justice, but to the Christian faith.”
“The strength of this faith was the cornerstone of his life as an operator of justice,” the cardinal told the Italian SIR news agency Sept. 21.
“Livatino was killed because he was prosecuting the mafia gangs by preventing their criminal activity, where they would have demanded weak judicial management. A service that he carried out with a strong sense of justice that came from his faith,” he said.
The courthouse where Livatino used to work in Agrigento also organized a conference over the weekend marking the anniversary of his death.
“Remembering Rosario Livatino … means urging the whole community to join forces and lay the foundations for a future no longer burdened by mafia loans,” Roberto Fico, president of the chamber, said at the event Sept. 19, according to La Repubblica.
“And it means strengthening the determination — which continues to animate so many judges and members of the police on the front line against organized crime — to want to do their duty at all costs.”
Pope Francis expressed his support this year for an initiative aimed at countering mafia organizations’ use of the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary to promote submission to the will of the mafia boss.
A working group organized by the Pontifical International Marian Academy brought together about 40 Church and civil leaders to address the abuse of Marian devotions by mafia organizations, who use her figure to wield power and exert control.
The pope previously met with the Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission on the anniversary of Livatino’s death in 2017. On that occasion, he said that dismantling the mafia begins with a political commitment to social justice and economic reform.
The pope said that corrupt organizations can serve as an alternative social structure which roots itself in areas where justice and human rights are lacking. Corruption, he noted, “always finds a way to justify itself, presenting itself as the ‘normal’ condition, the solution for those who are ‘shrewd,’ the way to reach one’s goals.”
On the same day that Pope Francis recognized Livatino’s martyrdom, the pope also approved a decree by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declaring the heroic virtue of seven other people, including an Italian priest Fr. Antonio Seghezzi, who helped the resistance against the Nazis and died in Dachau in 1945.
The heroic virtue of Fr. Bernardo Antonini, an Italian priest who served as a missionary in the Soviet Union and died in Kazakhstan in 2002 was also recognized, along with a 16th century bishop of Michoacán, Vasco de Quiroga, Italian Servant of Mary Msgr. Berardino Piccinelli (1905-1984), a Polish Salesian priest Fr. Ignazio Stuchlý (1869-1953), and Spanish priest Fr. Vincent González Suárez (1817-1851).
The congregation also declared Sr. Rosa Staltari, an Italian religious sister with the Congregation Daughters of Mary, the Most Holy, Co-Redemptrix (1951-1974) to have had heroic virtue.
Before his death, Judge Livatino wrote: “Justice is necessary, but not sufficient, and can and must be overcome by the law of charity which is the law of love, love of neighbor and God.”
“And once more it will be the law of love, the vivifying strength of faith, that will solve the problem at its roots. Let’s remember Jesus’ words to the adulterous woman: ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ By these words, he indicated the deep reason of our difficulty: sin is shadow; in order to judge there is need of light, and no man is absolute light himself.”
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Pope Francis: Tear down these walls!
“Anyone convicted of illegal entry will be banned from entering Vatican territory for a period of up to 15 years. If this sanction is breached, the offender may be punished with a prison sentence of one to five years.”
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That’s pretty hardcore.
Unbelievable hypocrisy?
Anything but, given what we have experienced both of ‘unbelievable’ and of ‘hypocrisy’ over the current pontificate.
More like: ‘par for the course’ from this pope.
According to Francis, countries overrun by illegal immigrants are not to do as Francis’ Vatican aims to do through its Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State Decree on persons illegally entering Vatican territory?
Doublespeak again, louder please, so all can hear it unambiguously!
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/259061/catholic-immigration-experts-respond-to-pope-francis-comment-that-repelling-migrants-is-a-grave-sin
Migrants must be granted free access to every neighborhood of Europe, North American and Australia, but there are a few areas that are strictly off-limits: Martha’s Vineyard, Davos, and now, we find out, the Vatican. Francis and company truly love the downtrodden, but from a safe distance. The rest of us get to enjoy a much more intimate experience.
I don’t know about Martha’s Vineyard but a family member worked for a couple from Nantucket Island who said there were quite a few illegal immigrants there. Somebody has to do the cleaning and yardwork, etc. and it’s not practical for workers to ferry back and forth constantly, so they stay on the island.
Large numbers of migrants without employment dumped on Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard would be a different situation.
The Vatican needs to have tight security for many reasons. I honestly understand this, and support it.
But incoming President Trump, and 77.3 million Americans are wrong for wanting stricter security measures and illegal immigration/deportation crackdowns here in our own country?
Sounds perfectly logical to me.
“I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me.”
The goats are in trouble now …
Strangers are welcomed, but trespassers aren’t, even if said trespassers do not happen to be strangers.
So according to Pope Francis it is a disgrace for the US to apprehend, deport and ban illegal immigrants from the USA. But it is OK for the Vatican to do the same? Do as I say not as I do? And we wonder why the Catholic Church is shrinking?
Catholic Immigration: corrected – There would be no basis for ill feeling toward foreign nationals, if every country accepted the responsibility to pay for their own citizens’ politically defined entitlements and socialization costs. (health, welfare, education and criminal/restitution/incarceration.)
It is the responsibility of every nation to provide for the politically defined health, education, welfare and criminal costs incurred by their citizens while their citizens are in a foreign country. Because of the diversity of means by which the needs of citizens are provided for through out the world, often ranging from high taxation for many benefits to no taxation for no benefits, and because a country’s citizen’s first and primary recourse for the proper and customary administration of defined rights, responsibilities and entitlements is to his own country’s policies and resources, whenever a citizen is “abroad” the host nation shall have the ability to charge a visiting citizen’s home country for expenses which the host nation has incurred to its own citizens due to the needs of the visiting citizen. These costs may also be reimbursed by “sponsoring” groups, insurance companies, or individuals. Enforcement of these payments shall be enacted through the issuance or denial of visas. A host country can deny entry to citizens from a delinquent country. And a country that cannot afford the social costs of another country can place restrictions on the issuance of visas to its citizens for that other country. This law/policy should also state that a child born to a foreign national while in the United States is granted dual citizenship, but that the responsibility for the “entitlement” costs of the child remain with the parents and the home country of the parents until the child turns 18 or becomes a citizen of the host nation alone, which ever comes later. Nothing in this policy should ever prevent charitable organizations from providing care or services to whom ever they choose.
It is a blessing and responsibility of the individual, family and church to take care of the poor, indigent and marginalized, not the government. All blessings come from God. When the individual, family and church are the “free will” source of charity then all are blessed; the giver, the receiver and the common good of the community.iWhen the government is the source of blessings for those in need, then the government becomes the source of blessings; supplanting God, changing a blessing into a “right” (without the corresponding responsibility) of “entitlement” there-in making losers out of all involved by stealing the free will charity of the giver (taxation replaces charity), conditioning the receiver to demand his “right to be taken care of” without owing anyone–even God– a prayer of gratitude, and conditioning the community towards atheistic socialism. The move (back–before 1930 there were no government entitlements! With few exceptions, the church –through her people –was the source of all charity.) to this new “charity of the heart and soul” paradigm must be gradual, but sure, to ensure that the transition allows for the prudent care of those in need. This can best be done by allowing a 100% tax deduction for gifts to charitable organizations, and by removing the ceiling on how much can be donated–as a percentage of income– while cutting back on the duration and degree of entitlements.
This is the opposite of what current representatives are proposing. There have been suggestions that all charitable donations deductions be deleted from the tax code… do you see what a Machiavellian power grab this is, do you see what an atheistic socialist and communistic power maneuver this is? And as a Catholic, who loves the Church deeply, I must tell you many Catholic religious have embraced the false notion that the government — not the church—should be required to take care of the needy. (Caritas in Veritate –Charity in Truth articulates an accurate implementation of these principles)
Well can’t go in the Vatican but the pope is applaud to the US picking up illegal aliens maybe our pope should stay out of politics. I’ve been a catholic for 80 years but this pope so far is far from the best.
And the Pope has the NERVE to try and Tellthe US to NOT enforce its own Immigration Laws????
Pope Francis needs to sit down and sgut up quite frankly.
First, I am a born, baptized, confirmed, and practicing Roman Catholic in the USA. And today, at Mass, we were “instructed” to contact our Congressmen to stand against “mass deportation”. Pope Francis, “people in glass houses (a.k.a. you)” shouldn’t throw stones.
The visiting priest also likened NOT speaking up about “mass deportation” was equivalent to Germans in 1939 not speaking up about concentration camps being built. Am I the only one who sees these 2 events have NOTHING in common?
The U.S. policy of mass deportation is aimed at CRIMINALS who are illegally in MY country. Also, these deportees are being returned ALIVE to their native countries, they are are NOT being exterminated or wrongly treated in any way.
Pope Frances needs to remember that the Vatican started building THEIR walls in the 9th century and has maintained them ever since. Again, “glass houses”! Vatican immigration policies are more stringent than the Untied States policies.
Who cries for the murdered, beaten, extorted, sexually abused, those who are sold into human trafficking, and their families? I do and every other American who had to witness these horrendous acts CAUSED by the 4 years of Biden/Harris open border policies.
Pope Francis, stay in your lane and out of all countries political policies.
It appears to me that Pope Francis was a NIMBY.