Pope sees tourism as tool for improving relationships

The Secretariat of Religious Tourism in Malta has chosen St Paul's Grotto in Rabat as the venue for this year's launch of Pope John Paul II's message for the 25th World Day of Tourism on Monday.

The secretariat chose St Paul's Grotto because it was an example of a place of veneration and also a tourist attraction since it was the place where St Paul lived while in Malta in 60 AD.

Mgr Philip Calleja, a delegate of the secretariat, said there were 694 million tourists in the world last year, generating a revenue of $514 billion. It was expected that by 2010 the number of tourists would have gone up to 900 million.

The secretariat in Malta believed it was important to promote tourism as a means of peace and unity, to combat problems tourism could create, to provide services which would aid tourists to see the beauty of the places they visited and celebrate Mass in the languages of the visiting tourists.

Besides in Maltese, Mass in Malta is also said regularly in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German.

In his message, the Pope pointed out that tourism improved relationships between individuals and peoples as when they were cordial, respectful and based on solidarity they constituted an open door to peace and harmonious coexistence.

"Indeed, much of the violence that humanity suffers in our times is rooted in misunderstanding as well as in the rejection of the values and identity of foreign cultures. Therefore, it would often be possible to get the better of these situations thanks to a better reciprocal knowledge..."

Pope John Paul II said there were many situations where tourism and sport were specifically interrelated and conditioned each other, for instance, when sport became the main reason for travel at home or abroad.

Sport and tourism were closely linked in great sporting events in which countries competed, such as the Olympic Games "which must not relinquish their lofty aim of arousing ideals of coexistence, understanding and friendship".

He said that in addressing a human activity that involved so many people, the occurrence of abuse and corruption was not surprising, despite the nobility of the objectives proclaimed.

"Among other phenomena, we cannot overlook exacerbated commercialism, aggressive rivalry, violence to individuals and things even to the point of the degradation of the environment or offence to the cultural identity of the host of the event."

The Pope said that St Paul the Apostle proposed the image of the athlete to the Christians of Corinth in order to illustrate Christian life and as an example of effort and constancy.

Giving a background into the history of St Paul's Grotto, Mgr John Azzopardi, St Paul's parish curator, said the grotto was materially a natural cave in the ditch of the Old Roman City.

It was historically the traditional place used by the shipwrecked Paul and it was religiously the cradle and foundation stone of Christianity in Malta.

St Paul in Malta had the liberty to preach, teach and administer the sacraments. It is said he formed the first Christian community in the grotto, which was soon converted to a church with an upper church to its left.

In 1600, a Spanish hermit, Juan Benegas de Cordova, a close friend of Pope Paul V, lived in the grotto and developed the place into a Pauline sanctuary and a centre of pilgrims on international lines.

The Knights of St John took over the grotto, severed from the parish church under their jurisdiction and promoted it by architectural structures, works of sculpture, paintings and silver plates.

More than that, they created a body of resident chaplains sanctifying the place with Masses, recitation of the divine office and assisting pilgrims. Their residence was attached to the grotto and the place was a venue of important visitors of the Order.

With the departure of the resident chaplains during British rule, the institution was administered by the government but the officiating and non-resident priests continued to officiate the church with Masses and the daily recitation of the divine office. They retained the use of the collegio.

During World War II, the collegio was turned into a community centre comprising, among others, a centre for refugees, a hospital, a bakery, a victory kitchen and a school.

With the advent of tourism, the grotto became a centre for tourists but also a venue for pilgrims especially those travelling in the footsteps of St Paul.

Pope John Paul II visited the grotto in 1990 and encouraged the promotion of the devotion to St Paul.