Earlier this week viewers on Facebook could see a priest, wearing the black church vestment with a gold cross on his breast, hanging precariously on a wooden ladder.

In perfect silence he was manoeuvering a wooden cross until it slotted safely into the base.

Then, the operation over, a thunderous applause rang out. The priest was not alone. The church, Birkirkara’s basilica, was packed with people, following the operation with bated breath.

The statue of St Helena was being prepared for the feast of Santu Cruc, (Holy Cross) which was celebrated on Friday, Birkirkara’s second feast in importance when the statue of St Helena is paraded round the village and Salvu Psaila’s majestic statue can be admired by one and all.

The people of Birkirkara, in gratitude, have named one of the main roads in the locality Psaila Street, though one wonders how many of the thousands using it remember the sculptor for whom it is named.

Hamrun is another locality in love with its statue – the saint, Gaetan in this case, receiving Baby Jesus from the Virgin.

Though in this case even though the statue was created in the same main street, no street has been named after the creator of the statue, Karlu Darmanin. Even though the locality has or had streets dedicated to persons from the British past – Duke of York, Duke of Edinburgh.

Over the years the people of Hamrun developed their own peculiar ritual for taking the statue back into the church after the annual procession – they run up the steps with it, no mean feat.

Now on Monday or Tuesday, a supporter of Valletta FC, still smarting over the team’s relegation for the first time in its 118 year history, had the temerity to write on Facebook that he could not understand why people were making such a big deal about the relegation.

After all, he added, ‘Gejtu the black one’ (as Valletta supporters call the saint in derision) had crashed down on the church’s steps.

That did it. All night long Hamrun supporters sprang to defend their saint and his statue. It was not true the statue had crashed down, they replied, it just swerved a little and was promptly rescued by many willing Hamrun hands.

Then the euphoric Hamrun supporters still celebrating their team’s victory of the Maltese football league, let fly their choice vituperative powers.

One has to understand the intricacies of the Maltese language plus something of the background to understand what was being said. For this reader from Hamrun, it was all hugely entertaining.

Once again the religious statue of the saint had been raised to the symbol of the community as a whole. (This will become even more apparent, come September, when the Hamrun statue will be taken to St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican).

I am writing this in the same week when so much has been happening on the political and court fronts that any observer would think the Maltese were only interested in what happens to Joseph Muscat and his henchmen after the conclusion of the inquiry by the beleaguered magistrate.

As evidenced by the crowds that turned out for the partisan events on May Day, many Maltese have finally woken up to these developments in preparation for the European Parliament election next month.

But as I have shown, I hope, today, not all Maltese are party partisan fanatics and many are more fanatic followers of their titular statues.

When the time comes, what will determine the outcome will not be the partisan cores of the two main parties but rather the ones in between, the ones celebrating the saints, the statues and why not, football.

This is not reductive – it is as things stand. Live with it.

 

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