“Today I gave an oath: from today I am in the judiciary. That God accompanies me and help me to respect the oath and behave in the way that the education, which my parents have given me, demands”. Thus he wrote on his agenda, an excited Rosario Livatino In July 1978, at the age of 25. However, the dream of working as a magistrate would have long lasted. On September 21, 1990 Livatino remains the victim of an ambush from Stidda, killed at 37 for the investigations conducted as a judge tree to the prosecutor of Agrigento. A “martyr of justice and faith” as Pope Francis said in the days of beatification, which took place in 2021, to want to underline how much spirituality was part of his way of being and understanding the mission he had chosen to undertake.
And it is precisely this profound dimension the common thread of ‘In faith: Rosario Livatino’, Documentary written by Matteo Billi directed by Omar Pesenti, broadcast on the first on Rai 1 tonight, Sunday 4 May, at 10:50 pm. Produced by Officina della Communication and Loft Produzioni, in collaboration with Rai Documentari, The docufilm retraces the work and the human and religious thickness of Livatino, the commitment that he made in identifying and investigating first within the Agrigento Prosecutor’s Office, on Stiddathe mafia organization that in the eighties of the last century came to rival with Cosa Nostra. A story that also makes use of an exclusive interview with Piero Nava, the eyewitness that allowed to identify the judge’s killers and who, from that moment, had to live undercover, changing identity.
This is the third documentary that the three producers dedicate to witnesses of legality and struggle for justice, after the success on the figure of the blessed Don Pino Puglisi, murdered by the mafia in Palermo in 1993 and Don Peppe Diana, killed by the Camorra in Casal di Principe in 1994. A work that knows how to speak to young people thanks to a rhythmic assembly and impact graphic choices that act as a glue among the testimonies of those who met and worked alongside Livatino, the archive materials – investigation reports, newspaper pages, news of news, Rai programs of the time – and the fiction scenes with the actor Angelo Sferrazza in the clothes of the “boy judge”. Narrative weaves are the witnesses of those years: Salvatore Cardinale, former deputy prosecutor of Agrigento; Salvatore teaches, cousin of Rosario Livatino; Don Giuseppe Livatino, parish priest of the church of S. Francesco in Canicattì; Luisa Turco, former judge of the Court of Agrigento; Sebastiano Mignemi, former prosecutor of Caltanissetta (now section of the section of the Court of Catania); and journalists Franco Castaldo and Toni Mira.
The portrait of Livatino who comes out is that of a mild man, minute in the physicist, not at all lover of the spotlight. A good magistrate who worked silent, among the first to understand the financial and economic trafficking of crime Through paper mills and false invoices. The investigations revealed that the order to kill him was given for the confiscations of assets he had ordered and, even more, because he was considered “unapproachable” by Stidda, incorruptible. A dangerous example.
Among the many repertoire images selected is that of Pope John Paul II during the Apostolic Visit of 8-9 May1993. On that occasion the Pontiff met Livatino’s parents. At the end of the Mass on May 9 in the Valley of the Temples took the microphone, pronouncing an anathema that went down to history: “God once said: ‘Do not kill’. No man cannot, any human agglomeration, mafia, cannot change and trample this most holy right of God.
The beatification process of Rosario Livatino, which began in 2011 with the decree issued by the Bishop of Agrigento at the request of the Amici del Giudice Association Rosario Livatino, He has revealed numerous episodes confirming the faith of the magistrate and his martyrdom. From the choice to refuse the escort so as not to endanger other lives, to the habit of going to the church to pray every morning before entering the prosecutor; to the letters “Std”, pinned on several pages of the Agenda: Sub protection of“Under the gaze of God”.
