The patroness of Raffadali is Saint Oliva, celebrated on the Monday after the second Sunday of July. Today's mother church, in the centre of the town, was built starting in 1507 and dedicated to the Madonna degli Infermi: in 1608 the parish and archpriestship of Santa Oliva were moved there from the old mother church dedicated to her, now vanished. It still holds the sarcophagus of Raffadali, depicting the rape of Proserpina, and a 16th-century wooden statue of Mary Most Holy of the Sick with the Child.
Founded in medieval times as an Arab hamlet, Raffadali became, after the Norman conquest, a fief of the noble Montaperto family; in 1507 Pietro Montaperto obtained from King Ferdinand the «ius populandi» to expand the settlement, starting work on strengthening the castle and building the mother church. In the 19th century the town was the seat of a district of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and in the 20th century it became one of the most active centres of the Sicilian peasant movement.
