Letters to the editor - July 17, 2026

Historical reinterpretations

Albert Cilia-Vincenti of Attard writes:

Permit me two comments regarding Ranier Fsadni’s accounts of Saint Lawrence’s religious belief and of Roman attitude to social status at the time (‘Treasures of the Church’, June 25).

Stained glass of St Lawrence of Rome. Photo: Shutterstock.com

We all know there are often different narratives of recent happenings let alone those of 2,000 years ago. Fsadni reminds us of the Christian gospel’s teaching that the “wretched and the marginalised were humanity’s indispensable encounter with the divine” while “for Roman society, dignity depended on social status”.

According to Jewish historical accounts, Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew was a charismatic preacher drawing ever increasingly large crowds and whose main narrative, and warning, was that the Kingdom of God was imminent and that the poor will inherit the Kingdom, while the rich were unlikely to do so.

This great charismatic Jewish socialist prophet obviously did not ingratiate himself with the rich elite in the Jewish Roman colony.

By 258 AD of Saint Lawrence’s times, the early Christians had long “hijacked” Jesus of Nazareth, the Jew and his teachings about how “blessed are the poor” and who, by then, is Jesus Christ of the Christian gospel, in which most references to Jews are negative and derogatory.

Social status and wealth were not the only dignity defining factors in Roman society. Although a mainly military regime, Rome founded the concepts of rule of law, schools and hospitals. You could not be regarded a true “gentleman” in Roman society if you had not contributed to the common good via the public service.

Social housing ‘crisis’

Alexander Jacobsen of St Julian’s writes:

It is entirely unacceptable to read that the waiting list for social housing in Malta has grown by nearly 50% since 2021.

In a country that recorded over 80,000 empty properties at the last census, having nearly 2,000 people on the waiting list for a home is a disgrace.

We should call this out for what it is: it is not a setback, or a growing issue; it is a crisis.

Housing is a right, not a privilege. One cannot claim to have socialist ‘principles’ or care about quality of life and attempt to entirely ignore such an issue. This requires immediate and vast changes to the system and would be a major priority for any government that claims to respect the Maltese people.

The government should immediately look into the establishment of the successful approved housing body model - or AHBs - used across Europe, which allow developers to construct high-standard accommodation on their own initiative that is then sold to the government.

This rewards good work and quick construction and may go some way to alleviate the pressure because, clearly, the schemes being inaugurated at present have had no impact.