50 years of priesthood marked by Gozo Church history publication
Mgr Joseph Bezzina leading celebrated mass with Cathedral Chapter to mark 50th anniversary of his ordination today at 7pm
Today, Friday, Mgr Joseph Bezzina, a priest and historian from Gozo, will lead a concelebrated mass with the Cathedral Chapter at 7pm to mark the 50th anniversary of his ordination.
He was ordained priest by Pope St Paul VI in 1975, a Holy Year. On June 29 of that year, feast of Saints Peter and Paul, 259 deacons hailing from over 60 nations from across the world, among them four from Gozo, were ordained at the parvis of St Peter’s Basilica in what the Holy See asserts to be the largest ordination to have ever taken place in the Catholic Church.
Eventually, Fr Bezzina obtained a First-Class Doctorate in Church History from the Gregorian University, Rome. He lectured Church History at the University of Malta, where he was head of Department for 17 years; at the National Institute of Ecclesiastical Studies for the Religious of Malta (INSERM); and at the Pontifical Seminary of Albania, Shkodër. He still lectures the subject at the Sacred Heart Seminary in Gozo.
In remembrance of his golden jubilee, Fr Bezzina will in a few weeks’ time publish the book A history of the Church in Gozo – from megalithic shrines to contemporary times.
Though plenty has, by now, been written about the history of Christianity in the Maltese islands, Fr Bezzina, well and truly, pioneered the systematic study of the biography of the Church in Gozo.
This book compressed between two covers a history elicited from the hundreds of articles on the subject that he himself has written in a myriad of publications during the past 50 years. This treasure trove of Gozo’s religious history is scheduled for publication in mid-September.