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CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- An Italian prisoner, sentenced to 30 years for murder, will make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on Saturday, in the presence of his bishop.

Luigi*, 40, wanted to be a priest when he was young, according to Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference. Kids called him “Father Luigi” when he was growing up. But alcohol, drugs, and violence changed the path of his life. In fact, he was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine when, getting into a fist fight, he took a life.

He was sentenced to prison. There, he became a lector for Mass. He began to study. He started to pray again. He prayed, especially, “for the salvation of the man I killed,” he wrote in a letter.

That letter was to Bishop Massimo Camisasca of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. The two began a correspondence last year. By then, Luigi had grown close with two priests who acted as chaplains to the prison in Reggio Emilia- Fr. Matteo Mioni and Fr. Daniele Simonazzi.

Bishop Camisasca told Avvenire that in 2016 he decided to spend time in prison ministry. “I didn’t know much about the reality of prison, I confess. But since then a path of presence, celebration and sharing has started that has enriched me greatly,” the bishop said.

Through that ministry, his correspondence with Luigi began. Speaking of his letters, the bishop said that “a passage that greatly touched me is the one in which Luidi says that ‘real life imprisonment is not lived inside a prison but outside, when the light of Christ is missing.” Luigi’s June 26 vows will not be part of joining a religious order or other organization. They are instead a promise to God to live poverty, chastity, and obedience, commonly called the evangelical counsels, exactly where he is — in prison.

The idea emerged from his conversation with prison chaplains.

“Initially he wanted to wait for his release from prison. It was Fr Daniele who suggested a different path, which would allow him to make these solemn vows now,” Camisasca told Avvenire.

“None of us are masters of our own future, the bishops said, “and this is all the more true for a person deprived of his freedom. This is why I wanted Luigi to think first of all what these vows mean in his present condition.” “In the end I convinced myself that in his gesture of self-giving there is something luminous for him, for the other prisoners and for the Church itself,” the bishop said.

In reflections on his vows, Luigi wrote that chastity will allow him to “mortify what is external, so that what is most important about us may emerge.”

Poverty offers him the possibility of settling for “the perfection of Christ, who has become poor” by making poverty itself “go from misfortune to bliss,” he wrote.

Luigi wrote that poverty is also the ability to share life generously with other prisoners like him. Obedience, he said, is obedience is the willingness to listen, even while knowing that “God also speaks through the mouth of the ‘fools.'”

Bishop Camisasca told Avvenire that “with the [coronavirus] pandemic we are all experiencing a time of combat and sacrifice. Luigi’s experience can really be a collective sign of hope: not to escape difficulties but to face them with strength and conscience. I did not know prison, I repeat, and also for me the impact was very hard at the beginning.”

“It seemed to me a world of despair in which the prospect of resurrection was continually contradicted and denied. This story, like others I have known, shows that this is not the case,” said the bishop.

Bishop Camisasca stressed that the merit of this vocation is “of the action of the priests, the extraordinary work of the prison police and of all health personnel, without a doubt.”

“But on the other hand there is the mystery that I can’t help but think about when I look up at the crucifix in my study. It’s from the prison workshop, it prevents me from forgetting the prisoners. Their sufferings and hopes are always with me. And they concern each of us,” he concluded.

*A pseudonym has been used in the reporting of this story.

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Dublin, Ireland, Mar 12, 2018 / 04:24 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Some 100,000 Irish pro-life advocates took to the streets across the country on Saturday to oppose legalizing abortion in the Republic of Ireland.

“Abortion has no place in a compassiona… […]

Rome Newsroom, Jan 12, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- For Catholic judge Rosario Livatino, to “render justice” was an act of prayerful self-dedication to God.

“To render justice is a fulfillment of oneself, it is a prayer, it is a dedication of oneself to God,” Livatino said in a lecture on faith and law on the southern Italian island of Sicily in 1986.

Livatino, whose first name means “rosary” in Italian, worked as a prosecutor in Agrigento dealing with the criminal activity of the mafia in the 1980s. He was murdered on his commute to work on Sept. 21, 1990, when he was 37 years old and serving as a magistrate. He was recently declared a martyr by Pope Francis and is expected to be beatified in Sicily this year. 

In an interview published Jan. 12, Fr. Giuseppe Livatino, postulator of the cause for Livatino’s beatification, said that the young Catholic judge provided a “credible witness” of coherence in his life of faith and his daily work.

“More than just ‘holy cards,’ Christians today urgently need credible witnesses. And that [is what] Rosario is,” his postulator said in an interview with ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language news partner.

“Rosario knew well, thanks to his formative experience in Catholic Action, that the Christian is called to be ‘light of the world and salt of the earth,’ who must sanctify the world through one’s family and daily work,” Fr. Livatino said.

As postulator and cousin of the martyred judge, Fr. Livatino has spent years collecting testimonies, examining witnesses, and reading the judge’s personal writings to promote his cause for beatification and potentially canonization.

He said: “Among the testimonies collected, I was positively struck by the episode [recalled] by his former teacher, a priest, who asked him for a ‘small recommendation.’ Rosario felt deep respect and replied firmly: ‘When you offer confession, do you accept recommendations?’”

“Livatino drew directly from the experience of the saints, and in every dimension of his life he rejected any mediocrity … What he has to do, Rosario likes to do it right. He pursues that ‘perfection’ indicated by Jesus in the Gospel, to build the Kingdom of God.” 

“Rosario had drawn his profound wisdom from the Gospel and the Magisterium of the Church. He knows and lives the Gospel, knows and applies the reflections of the [Second Vatican] Council Fathers on the role of the lay faithful in today’s world,” he said.

While promoting Livatino’s cause, his cousin has received thousands of emails from all over Italy, other European countries, Latin America, and the Philippines.

“Many asked for the text of the prayer to ask for the glorification on earth of the Servant of God. Many others asked for information on his life,” he said. “But all showed great interest in this splendid figure of ‘credible witness.’ Many said that they had received spiritual graces through Rosario’s intercession.”

“This man, unknown to most when he was alive, has spoken and continues to speak effectively since Sept. 21, 1990.”

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