Our family lived at 27, Sannat Road in Rabat, sive Victoria, after World War II. They had moved house from Ta’ Sannat after losing their home and a child when one of two bombs, that were let off on the village, exploded nearby on October 10, 1942.

Our new house was just opposite the Dominican sisters’ convent and church dedicated to Our Lady of Pompeii. My first school days were at the infant classes held in part of the convent, on the right-hand side of the church, a few metres down the road from the Bishop’s Sacred Heart Seminary.

Our family used to attend the early morning mass at the above-mentioned church, which used to be celebrated by Mgr Anton Mercieca and later by his nephew, Mgr George Mercieca, who was uncle to the late Archbishop of Malta, Mgr Ġużeppi Mercieca.

The church of Our Lady of Pompeii, in Sannat Road, Victoria. Photo: Joe Zammit Ciantar

As altar boys, my brothers Anton and Giovanni and I had been taught to serve mass in Latin and used to help in this church in our childhood.

Our parents’ relation with the Dominican sisters was almost special; besides us siblings helping as altar boys, our father’s uncle, Fr Pawl Ciantar (who was also my godfather), used to be the spiritual director of the small church of Tal-Ħniena, in the limits of Xewkija, which was in the care of the Dominican sisters from the same Victoria convent.

The author's father, Ġużeppi

Hence, it was no surprise that when the sisters needed some help and asked my family, my parents would not hesitate to oblige.

Seventy-four years ago, when the Catholic Church announced that, on November 1, 1950, Pope Pius XII would be proclaiming the Assumption of Mary, Mother of God, into Heaven, Body and Soul as dogma of the Roman Catholic Church, the sisters asked my father whether he could help them listen to the proclamation of the dogma which was to be transmitted live on radio.

There was no TV reception in those days, and the sisters did not have a radio.

Father promised to help. He was a radio fanatic; he had some three or four radios at the time. He was also a radio repairer, a proficient radio amateur and had also built a radio receiver on which, in the evenings, he used to spend hours listening to and corresponding with radio transmitting amateurs from all over the world.

There was no TV reception in those days, and the sisters did not have a radio

In the morning of Wednesday, November 1, 1950, feast of All Saints, my father took out a large radio, placed it on a high table on our balcony, which faced the verandah of the sisters’ convent, and switched it on and turned up the volume as much as possible.

All the sisters gathered in the verandah, some 30 or 40 metres across the road.

The Assumption of the Virgin Mary (1670), oil on canvas by Bartolomeo Sebastian Morillo, found at the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. Photo: Joe Zammit Ciantar

And at noon – at least I presume it was at that time – my parents and I (eight years and five months old at the time), together with the Dominican sisters, listened to Pope Pius XII declaring ex-cathedra the statement in the Apostolic Constitution ‘Munificentissimus Deus’, officially defining the ‘Dogma of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary’: ‘auctoritate Domini Nostri Iesu Christi, Beatorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli ac Nostra pronuntiamus, declaramus et definimus divinitus revelatum dogma esse: Immaculatam Deiparam semper Virginem Mariam, expleto terrestris vitae cursu, fuisse corpore et anima ad caelestem gloriam assumptam’.

[‘By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory’].

I can still recall the sisters thanking my father for making it possible for them to hear this live transmission.