When confronting those who abuse power and exploit the poor, Fr John Caruana, affectionately known to us as Il-Bullu or Ġanni, was, true to his nickname, a raging bull.
He showed this, among other things, through his active participation, sometimes even at the risk of limb and life, in the Landless Peasants Movement of Brazil. He once defied the orders of armed soldiers who tried to prevent him from going into a ranch to help the peasants who were occupying it.
However, when the vulnerable, the poor, those in need approached him he became a gentle lamb with a heart of gold, offering all the help he could give, to the point of sharing his modest income as priest with those in need.
Ġanni did not get his zeal for justice and his commitment for the downtrodden from reading Marx or Che Guevara or some other revolutionary leader. He discovered that Jesus loved him and wanted to make him His. Ġanni accepted the invitation and reciprocated this love.
He went to meet his Creator on June 28 while serving in a parish in Maringa, Brazil, where he ministered for the last 35 years. He was born on June 3, 1941 and was ordained a priest in Malta on March 11, 1967. Appropriately enough, the first Mass reading on the day of his death was from the prophet Amos, who spoke against an increased disparity between the very wealthy and the very poor.
When confronted by the exploiters and the aggressors, Ġanni was like the enraged Jesus in the Temple. When faced by Church leaders who preferred to reach a compromise with power or were simply too terrified to fight corruption and injustice, he was like Jesus confronting the Pharisees and the scribes.
When meeting the needy, he was like Jesus meeting the widow of Nain, the born blind, the little children and the crowds hungry for the Word.
Ġanni was one of those who were determined to leave the world a better place than they found it and was ready to pay a price for fulfilling this mission.
In Malta, he was at the forefront of the struggle to make a success of the administrative reform of the Church. This radical reform enabled the Church to use its financial assets with greater transparency and justice. To get more justice, he pushed for the setting up of a fund that guarantees a decent remuneration for priests.
He was very active in Christus Rex, an association of priests. Unfortunately, this organisation has been defunct for decades. It used to publish a monthly magazine called Il-Pastor.
In the last few months before he died, he was working on the publication of all the editorials of Il-Pastor together with a commentary. This was a publication he did not manage to finalise. But he succeeded in publishing several others.
He worked to form Christians critical of the structural injustices perpetrated by capitalism- Fr Joe Borg
His magnum opus was the hardbound The Maltese Missionary Experience. When he set on this arduous task, we used to pull his leg, telling him that he will be the first person to write a book without ever reading one!
Ġanni, as was his wont, smiled and soldiered on, even when elements in the Church hindered him. The book gives a wide spectrum of stories of Maltese missionaries in close to 70 countries. This is a truly ecclesial book, which in my commentary in The Sunday Times of Malta (December 24, 2014) I described as “something beautiful for the Church”.
He published four books in Portuguese. One is about the basic ecclesial communities, one is about the Pastoral Commission of Land and Gozitan missionary Fr João Maria Cauchi, another one is about the Landless Peasants Movement and one is about his pastoral experiences in Sarandi, his first parish.
Ġanni was an eternal optimist and a visionary with solid entrepreneurial skills which he used to better the quality of life of the community he served. Had he not been a priest he would have become a millionaire.
At 81 years of age, he was still imbued with the spirit of Vatican II, unfortunately absent and challenged by many young priests. His Church was a living community, not a static institution. In the spirit of Vatican II and Liberation Theology, he worked to form Christians critical of the structural injustices perpetrated by capitalism.
His role in the Landless Peasants Movement and his support for President Lula da Silva were two concrete ways he believed would bring more justice to the people of Brazil, whom he generously served.
He died but “his soul keeps marching on”.