These past five days I have spent much time lying down, eyes closed, thinking of England. Richard England.
On Saturday, Malta’s most illustrious architect gave the inaugural address at the launch of Fondazzjoni Peter Serracino Inglott, whose mission is to preserve, promote and develop the intellectual and cultural legacy of the late priest and philosopher.
Fr Peter and England met in 1950 when they were barely in their teens. They hit it off because they had several shared interests. Fr Peter, aged 14, was writing an article about Maltese farmhouses and had heard that England, 13, had undertaken a photographic study – both of them anticipating the popular appreciation of farmhouses that only spread some 40 years later.
Over the following six decades, they collaborated across a range of fields – architecture, literature, opera and academe, among others. Their life projects were so intertwined that when Fr Peter died, in 2012, England felt as though several chapters had just been ripped out of his own book of life.
The story is about much more than two precocious teens who grew up, on a tiny island, to dominate their respective fields while acquiring recognition abroad. Their friendship is a microcosm in which we can see a succession of three or more worlds.
In the 1950s, it was already apparent that the Malta they were growing up in was on the wane. They were both raised in families interested in opera, although the national opera house was no more. They were both interested in farmhouses but partly, surely, because they were a sign of a disappearing world, whose economic and political foundations were undergoing profound transformation.
Then, in the 1960s, they were men in a world made young again. Internationally, the youthful John F. Kennedy displaced a generation of politicians who had served as soldiers in WWI. Vatican Council II was sweeping across the Catholic world. And Malta was achieving independence.
It was a new landscape. England was responsible for some of the iconic buildings representing the new society and economy. Fr Peter mentored young poets and artists while introducing, into university teaching, the thought of Freud, Marx and the latest from Oxbridge, California and Paris.
The clash between the old and young worlds is captured in England’s work on the Manikata church. The then archbishop, Michael Gonzi, didn’t like it. “It looks like a German U-Boat,” he quipped (although he did not obstruct its construction and celebrated mass at its official opening).
But, as England says, the design of that church benefitted from Fr Peter’s input: their discussions of Vatican II’s liturgical renewal and how church architecture could reshape the way communities came together and worshipped.
By 1980, that promise of a young world had given way to something darker. It was the year Fr Peter wrote an article called ‘An Alternative Future for Malta’. The future was no longer something to be tweaked but about radical choices.
Their life projects were so intertwined that when Fr Peter died, in 2012, England felt as though several chapters had just been ripped out of his own book of life- Ranier Fsadni
Fr Peter argued for an altogether different way of creating it. Politics had to be based on structured dialogue, not authoritarian imposition. A politics of participation had to replace the politics of control. The economy had to shift to one based on added value. In 1980, Fr Peter was already arguing for a cap on tourist arrivals and increasing revenues through cultural tourism, itself not possible without a comprehensive environmental policy.
That’s why the collaboration between England and Fr Peter is a microcosm of the eras during which their friendship flourished. The rollercoaster of personal creative energy and dashed hopes (which didn’t stop with the 1980s, of course) has to be understood against Malta’s own progress and regressions.
And that brings me back to what has stayed with me over the past five days. At the best and worst of times, England and Fr Peter could discuss the future in a way that was truly exploratory, not dictated by the straitjacket of narrow politics or the gimmicks imposed by clickbait. They contributed to building various platforms in which others could join those discussions openly, not in trench warfare, but collaboratively.
My question is this: There must be many such friendships in Malta today but can two precocious teens fulfil their promise without seeking a life abroad?
Where would two such friends be able to sound out their ideas? Who would be there to hear them and, in listening, as Fr Peter often did, draw out their ideas with greater clarity?
What fund of cultural and civic experience can they draw upon so that their enterprise can entertain greater chances of success?
It’s not just the young that need such a platform and cultural resources. Malta today is full of people in a kind of internal exile.
They are dismayed at the way we seem incapable, as a society, even to begin talking about the future in anything other than soundbites and slogans, happy talk and denunciation.
The capable people are rapidly losing hope that the effort is worth it.
The country, Europe and the world have many challenges that Fr Peter could not have anticipated. But we can still learn from his insistence on listening to everyone’s experience, on relying on reason and dialogue, on being ready to experiment, and taking a holistic systemic approach to challenges.
It’s for this reason that Fondazzjoni Peter Serracino Inglott was set up: to provide an alternative future for the very way we explore our choices and prospects.
Ranier Fsadni is a founding board member of the Fondazzjoni Peter Serracino Inglott, together with Louis Galea, Petra Caruana Dingli and Mother Abbess Maria Adeodata Testaferrata de Noto OSB. Enquiries may be sent to fondazzjonipsi@gmail.com.