Centenary celebrations by Catenian Association

As part of the centenary celebrations of the Catenian Association, 116 members, wives and widows from Britain came to Malta and Gozo for nine days earlier this month to celebrate with our Maltese and Gozitan members and their families.

Since I have seen no mention of the visit or the celebrations I thought I would share some good news with the readers of The Times.

The Catenian Association, founded in Manchester in 1908 at the instigation of Bishop Louis Casartelli, provides a social network which helps Catholic laymen live out their various vocations as husband, father, friend, work colleague, committed Christian and active Catholic. Today Catenians operate in Australia, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Malta, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe with India and Northern Ireland coming on board in 2009. Our aim is to strengthen family life through friendship and faith. As Catenians we regard it as a privilege to be proudly Catholic and we are conscious of the responsibilities this places on us.

Amongst the visits, meals, receptions and home hosting the central part of our visit was the celebration of Holy Mass. The President of the Malta and Gozo Catenians, Joseph Gauci Maistre set out to arrange a Solemn High Mass in the Metropolitan Cathedral of St Paul, Mdina on November 13 concelebrated by 100 priests to mark our Centenary. Thus we were able to truly celebrate 100 years of friendship through our shared faith.

We were privileged to attend the most magnificent celebration of the Holy Mass led by Archbishop Paul Cremona and concelebrated by the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Tommaso Caputo, Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Mercieca, Bishop Emeritus Adeodato Micallef, the Maltese and Gozitan Catenian Chaplains and another 90 members of the clergy.

We are grateful to Archbishop Paul Cremona for leading our celebratory Mass and for his thought-provoking homily, and to Archbishop Tommaso Caputo for presenting the Apostolic Blessing to the Catenian Association in Malta. The people of Malta and Gozo are fortunate to have such able and charismatic Bishops. Our thanks also go to the Mdina Metropolitan Cathedral Choir, their choirmaster and organist John Aquilina and tenor soloist Andrew Sapiano, himself a Maltese Catenian.

Our thanks go to all members of the clergy for their support, to Mr Gauci Maistre and his committee for the great amount of work and organisation which went into such a wonderful visit. We will take many memories of our visit back home with us and keep our brothers and friends in Malta and Gozo in our prayers.

As a part of our celebrations this year we had more than 1,700 Masses for Vocations celebrated on the Feast of St Peter and St Paul and in addition to our support for local charities we are supporting internationally a project to provide water, life and hope to the poor people of Zimbabwe, a country I was privileged to visit last year and witness for myself the terrible conditions which the vast majority of the people have to endure.