One is driven to ask: is there anywhere in this society immune from the Community Chest Fund? Is there anything sacred where the CCF does not enter?

We had, over Christmas, the issue regarding the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at St John’s where it was first claimed, and then denied, that people were allowed in only after having paid for a breakfast at the Palace.

Now we have this Camino initiative. To explain: the Camino is a hallowed medieval tradition of a pilgrimage to St James’ burial place at Campostela in Spain.

Originally, in the Middle Ages, pilgrims, once access to Jerusalem’s sacred sites was blocked, began their walking pilgrimage from cities afar. In Paris, right next to Notre Dame, there is the Tour Saint Jacques where pilgrims gathered and from where they left.

In recent years, the pilgrimage got shortened and it now begins near the Spanish border.

The Camino is a very individual spiritual exercise. Walking in the Spanish countryside, the pilgrims meet and converse. They sleep rough in very basic accommodation, they pray and attend Mass as they progress on their way to St James’s resting place.

People who have tried it, from Peguy down, have testified to the cathartic and spiritual effect the Camino has had on them. The Camino has come to rival, for instance, the Taize encounters, as a source of spiritual inspiration for people, young people especially, who may not be among the most avid church-goers but very much in need of spiritual rejuvenation.

That is why one has been surprised, not to say shocked, at the announcement that a group of Maltese are going to do the Camino and collect funds for the CCF. Where the initiative came from was not clearly spelt out but it must be said this may have been the very first time the Camino has been linked to fund raising.

Beyond this issue, there are many wider questions one feels the need to ask. From quite manageable beginnings as a fund raising initiative around Christmas, the CCF has now grown and grown to become a year-long series of initiatives and fund raising. It has practically taken over the Presidency so much that, not just today, the President has become the CCF’s chief fund raiser and animator.

Consider, if one can, the contrast with Italy’s just resigned President, Giorgio Napolitano. The contrast cannot be wider. No CCF for Giorgio yet most Italians agree he did a wonderful job in his seven years.

Our CCF has become not just one big fund-raiser but also one institution on its own. The previous President set up a unit working all year round for the  CCF, with people employed full-time. It also set up a Foundation for people with obesity problems. This initiative, while praiseworthy, and structural, should have had different parents: its most logical place would have been within the National Health Service.

One does not dispute the fact that the funds collected are being put to good use, although this was not always the case in the past. There was also the issue that the CCF, being a Presidency initiative, refused to be audited and structured within the NGOs under their special Commissioner.

That may have been legally right and CCF of course has its own board and its audited accounts but the perception in the land is that it is ‘the President’s own’ and linked very much to the Occupant of San Anton.

 

What one is complaining and questioning about here is about whether there is any limit to CCF’s spread and extent, not least on the President’s time and duties. Surely the Maltese Constitution never imagined the Presidency to be CCF-related. Surely this is as bad as when it seemed the Presidency was a series of Soirees by the village band clubs. At least, those band clubs are an expression of popular culture while in its present format CCF very much looks like a shrub that has become a tree and that has spread its branches over the whole island and its roots underneath the entire society.