Archbishop Charles Scicluna on Sunday compared the coronavirus pandemic to the two world wars that ravaged Europe, and urged decision makers to put public safety first.   

During a homily at Remembrance Day Mass in St John's Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Scicluna drew parallels between the pandemic and the world wars of the 20th century, saying that “today we are fighting an invisible enemy” 

“Today we are fighting another battle,” the archbishop said.  

Often referred to as Poppy Day, Remembrance Sunday is a memorial day observed across the Commonwealth since the end of the First World War to hail those lost in the line of duty.

In a Mass attended by Maltese political leaders, Scicluna urged the country’s decision-makers to take the right decisions in the interest of public health.  

The choices made during the wars that ravaged Europe, he said, had cost human lives even in Malta, even though many of those decisions had not been taken on the island. 

Opposition leader Bernard Grech (second from left) and Prime Minister Robert Abela (right) exchange peace greetings during mass. Photo: Archdiocese of Malta

“Those in positions of power would do well to remember the decisions taken by their predecessors and their ramifications,” he said 

The archbishop drew upon the concept of “political love”, which Pope Francis referred to in his recent encyclical entitled ‘Brothers, one and all’. 

Political love, the archbishop said, means working for a common good, for solidarity between countries, for justice in the world, and for true and lasting peace. 

President George Vella lays a wreath at the foot of the Remembrance monument. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

In the context of this ongoing global viral pandemic, however, political love meant meeting one’s responsibility to protect the public. Politicians have a duty to ensure fatalities as a result of the virus are kept to a minimum. 

In closing, the archbishop said that without a clear memory of the past one cannot move forward.   

The memory that bore witness to the horrors of war, he said, must survive. 

"What we forget we risk repeating. But if we remember what has already been done, we can grow,” he said.