Pope Francis Visits Malta: A Look at the Catholic Island in Southern Sicily

Pope Francis starts his two-day visit to the tiny European country of Malta, a strongly Catholic island just south of Sicily, on April 2, 2022. This papal trip puts a spotlight on Malta’s complicated history and important contemporary concerns. Chief among these is the sharp increase in the number of asylum-seekers from Africa and the Middle East, and criticism of how Malta has treated them.

The Catholic Church and Pope Francis

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide. Catholic Church is considered the world's oldest and largest continuously functioning international institution. The church consists of 24 particular churches and almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, on December 17h 1936) is the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State since 2013.

Francis maintains that the Church should be more open and welcoming for members of the LGBT community. Francis is an outspoken critic of unbridled capitalism and free market economics, consumerism, and overdevelopment, and advocates taking action on climate change, a focus of his papacy with the promulgation of Laudato si'. In international diplomacy, he helped to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba and supported the cause of refugees during the European and Central American migrant crises. Since 2018, he has been an opponent of populism. He has faced criticism from theological conservatives on many questions, including his promotion of ecumenism, as well as admitting civilly divorced and remarried Catholics to communion with the publication of Amoris laetitia.

Why is Pope Francis Visiting Malta Now?

Tradition has it that the first Maltese saint was St. Publius, the first-century bishop of the early Christian community in Malta. He was venerated as a saint long before saints were officially proclaimed by the pope. However, historians have raised questions whether Publius ever existed or served as bishop.

The only Maltese person to be officially named a saint by a pope is St. George Preca, a priest of the archdiocese of Malta in the first half of the 20th century. Preca was beatified, or given the title of “Blessed,” the second-to-last step in being proclaimed a saint, in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. In 2007 he was canonized – the last step in achieving sainthood – by Pope Benedict XVI.

Preca was born in 1880 in Malta’s capital city, Valetta, and was brought up in a town just outside of the city. After primary and secondary school, he entered the seminary of Malta and, despite severe lung problems that threatened his life, was ordained to the priesthood in 1906.

Ordinary Catholics in Malta at the time were largely uneducated. Most did not know the Bible well and instead focused on devotional practices that some priests considered almost superstitious. As a seminarian, Preca became increasingly convinced that the focus of his ministry was to be training laymen – and later, laywomen – to teach other Catholics, both children and adults, about their Catholic faith and the Bible.

Training laypeople to educate others like themselves about their faith was a revolutionary idea at the time, since usually only seminarians or priests, and sometimes nuns, would be involved in that kind of education. Before his ordination, Preca himself had become active in discussing religious topics with ordinary working men, and then teaching catechism – the principles of Catholic beliefs – to younger boys in a nearby town.

That group of young men would become the core of the new religious society for laypeople, The Society of Christian Doctrine, which Preca soon founded. Later, this society was nicknamed “Museum” because of the dilapidated building that was its original meeting place. These unordained teachers – called catechists – were later divided into two branches, one for men and one for women.

As time went on, they established educational centers for children and adults in almost every parish in Malta. These centers are still active today in Malta and in several other countries as well, especially Australia.

But at the beginning of the 20th century, Preca’s ideas were not immediately accepted by his more conservative superiors. Within a few years of their founding, his archbishop ordered his catechetical centers in Malta to be closed. Though they were reopened a few years later after deeper investigation, his group was not given final, official approval in Rome until 1932. During that time, and for the remainder of his life, he encouraged members of his society to remain humble and kind in the face of hardship and criticism.

Preca died in July 1962. In October 1962, the Second Vatican Council, which was called by Pope John XXIII to modernize the Catholic Church, began in Rome. Among the reforms the council stressed was the importance of both Scripture and tradition as the foundations for Catholic Christian life, and it encouraged all Catholics to study the Bible.

Preca was a pioneer in training laypeople to become religious educators for both children and adults, focusing on Gospel teaching while encouraging them to live their lives according to its values. In fact, at Preca’s beatification in 2001, Pope John Paul II referred to him as Malta’s “second father in faith.”

In 2010 Pope Benedict XVI proposed a new evangelization movement for all members of the Catholic Church in the 21st century. This movement placed a renewed emphasis on preaching and teaching in the contemporary world, very much in line with Preca’s work in the early 20th century. Both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have expanded the idea of this new focus on preaching and teaching the Gospel to include explicit concern for the welfare of refugees and migrants.

The pope’s visit to Malta draws new attention to the work of St. George Preca. His focus on educating Catholics more deeply on the meaning of Jesus’ teaching may provide some guidance for Malta and other countries in confronting this global issue.

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Credit: The Conversation via Reuters Connect

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