With a general election quickly followed by a papal visit a few days later, the country was thrown into more than a bit of a tizzy. These events are stressful enough in isolation from each other but, following each other so closely, it’s a recipe fit to knock you out cold. However, among the country’s general scrambling back to any form of normality, what has very much stayed with me is the many who overwhelmingly took to the heaving streets to wave flags at one of the world’s most prominent spiritual leaders and the very blunt and concise words he had to say about corruption, construction, greed and illegal immigration.
Wherever he went, the pope did not mince his words and, yet through the clapping and cheering, I wondered whether anyone was hearing what he was actually saying. Perhaps the best example of the cognitive dissonance that so many Maltese seem to suffer from came out in a recording of a woman gleefully and enthusiastically shouting about how she had finally managed to catch a glimpse of the pope followed by a barrage of swear words that she definitely has to queue to go to confession for. If ever there was an award for a people who embrace the shiny trappings of things without understanding their substance, we would win it every single time.
What was not lost on many though was the pope’s very obvious and pointed visit to the Peace Lab in Ħal Far. Organised as his last official stop before going back to Rome, the photo of the pope embracing Daniel Jude Oukeguale spoke far louder than his words about how the Maltese kindly took in the Apostle Paul. Instead of people seeing this and perhaps trying to question their own behaviour towards those less fortunate, the backlash was extreme with people putting a spin on the classic “go back to your country” line and telling the pope to take migrants back to the Vatican. And then they have the audacity to go to church on Sunday and claim that racism isn’t real in this country. Don’t make me laugh.
I wondered whether anyone was hearing what he was actually saying- Anna Marie Galea
Comment after comment filled with venom towards people they don’t even know who have only asked to be given a place to exist in a safer world than the one they left behind and then we wonder how Lassana Cisse’s murder happened.
His alleged murderers are still out on bail while his family continue to wait for justice three years on. All those hours of Mass, all those teachings of hope and compassion, and is this the best that Catholic Malta, which literally has a church for every day of the year, can do?
Are we to continue to allow this to go on without addressing it? Can we offer no closure to his family, who continue to wait for the return of the body of their dead son?
Can you imagine the outrage, the furore, the ministers that would be spoken to if it was a Maltese man who was shot as he made his way home in the dark after a night out with friends?
The pope doesn’t need your flags and the church pew doesn’t need more warm bottoms if the messages of charity and empathy aren’t reaching your ears and, more importantly, your hearts. It would perhaps do good to remember that before claiming you live in the most Catholic country in the world.