Italian judge latest example of Church’s new test for ‘martyrdom’
Judge Rosario Livatino. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)
Rosario Livatino, 37 at the time of his death, will become the first Italian anti-mafia judge to be beatified, following in the footsteps of Father Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi, the country’s best known anti-mafia priest, who was killed in 1993 and beatified shortly after Pope Francis’s election in 2013.
News Analysis
ROME – Here are two different standards for establishing what counts as “martyrdom” in the Catholic Church:
Someone is a martyr if the person or persons who killed them were motivated by religious prejudice or hatred. Think Roman emperors executing early Christians for refusing to sacrifice to pagan gods.