As one of Malta’s respected present-day thinkers Fr René Camillericommented in a breakfast show interview, one needed to first decide whether to laugh or cry. The television pictures of the new archpriest of Żebbuġ, Gozo, in full princely regalia, standingup on a smashing, open-top Porsche Boxster car being pulled by a group of children on the way to his installation ceremony, inevitably left a sour taste among people who actually live, not merely exist, in the 21st century.
You really cannot blame the TVM news people for showing the mediaeval circus– it had a time-capsule element. Whichever way you look at it, it was a throwback to either the servile mentality of a distant past, or else to the popular Carry On films of the Sixties when top British actors were providing the cinema world with social parodies that one could analyse with its slapstick humour.
In this day and age, one would have expected the diocesan authorities in Gozo to intervene and make sure the ceremony was carried out in the style and manner that befit the times. A time when Pope Francis himself abandoned the idea of being carried in public on the shoulders of men while sitting ona bejewelled throne and when, immediately after he was elected Pope, he had chosen to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse rather than in the papal apartments of the Apostolic palace.Reacting to the pictures from Żebbuġ, social media was cynically full of pictures depicting Jesus entering Jerusalem in his last days on a donkey.
What did the Bishop of Gozo, Mario Grech, think of the sad spectacle of children slavishly pulling the five-star, classy German car, and how much fun was it for Canon Ġwann Sultana, the Porsche sultan in the pictures, as he was slip-geared towards the parish church where he was about to assume responsibility of the parishioners’ pastoral needs? We are talking about two relatively young clergymen who really should know better. Sultana was ordained priest in June 1996 and it was absolutelyincredulous to watch him star in a ceremonial pochade quickly condemned by many people as “distasteful, parochial, utterly out of touch, dark ages, very bad taste” and other unpleasant comments.
But in history, Gozo does tend to have this curious streak of staging occasions and causing events that defy the century being lived in. It was at Rabat (Victoria, for the fastidious) in the very early Sixties when a Dom Mintoff/Labour Party mass meeting was completely and intentionally drowned out by the noise from church bells nearby. He was only talking about the need for the Maltese to finally enter the 20th century as a free and independent nation, for Maltese workers to have jobs rather than being forced to emigrate, to have decent wages and to obtain rights already being enjoyed by most of the Western world.But the Maltese and Gozitan clergies did not want people to hear any of that.
Funnily enough, when a mere seven years later the British actor and director Anthony Newley chose Gozo to film parts of his autobiographical, X-rated “Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?” and, in the process, even moving a statue of the Madonna from the centre of Ramla l-Ħamra to the side of the bayto create more space for the racy scenes, no bells were heard in protest.
Much nearer to us, the worst anti-divorce, anti-LGBT+, and anti-IVF standpoints, many of them verging on both theinsidious and the hysterical, were expressed on the sister island. For this reason, one certainly cannot refute the oft-expressed adage: “Gozo, where time stands still.” But it really doesn’t have to stand still that much.
The new generations of positive-thinking Gozitans deserve better than having to witness time-honoured practices that have nothing to do with religious beliefs but are merely a remnant, a fossil, of days long gone, thank goodness. Like Cowboys & Injuns, colonies and empires, aristocratic grandeur anddivine power. As the polls persistently show, the reality of Gozo today is reflected in increased employment, an unprecedented tourism boom, and growing foreign investment, particularly in the health sector.
The majority of Gozitans are no longer being taken for a ride by conservative politicians who used to insist the Gozitan vote was automatically theirs by some quintessential right. Paradoxically, I guess it is why so many people felt unnerved by the scene of children, well, taking the new archpriest for a posh ride.
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One of the ‘papabili’?
According to reports citing top Vatican observer John Allen,editor of “Crux Now”, Archbishop Charles Scicluna is among the candidates – the Italians have a crafty word for it: papabili – for the papacy, even if not yet a cardinal.
The speculation of course had many of us ticking. A Maltese Pope – was that ever a possibility given the size of both country and diocese? Were that to happen, there is no doubt it would be considered an incredible honour for this minuscule nation to have one of its own leading the Universal Catholic Church. Mgr Scicluna’s intellectual capacity and managerial prowessarewell known and reflected in the various high positions he has held in the Vatican as well as in the special assignments he continues to be trusted with.
But then, some playful, mental meandering becomes irresistible. I am sure many others like me once heard or read somewhere that we would know the end of the world is nigh when a Maltese takes over the Vatican. Nostradamus had gone one step further when he is said, or interpreted, to have hinted that the Vatican would one day have to flee and seek asylum in Malta. How could anyone feel scared anymore by the rumours of gigantic tsunamis from a sinking Etna?
What would Archbishop Scicluna’s chosen name for a Pope be? Adrian (VII) is a lot more probable than Joseph, using his RTK yardstick. And victims of sexual abuse by members of the clergy all over the world could kiss their hopes of financial compensation goodbye.
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Thesad side of success
It has been established that IVF has become so successful that the rate of adoptions has gone down considerably. It is now confirmed that three in 10 women aged under 35 who undergo fertility treatment are successful – almost three times as many as when the process was first developed way back in 1978. In fact, IVF used to be around seven per cent successful;today it is around 30 per cent.
Inevitably, adoption as a choice now has to compete with lots of other ways of having – or not having – children, which is a very sad reality considering the number of children around the world who eagerly await their chance of belonging to a happy family. The UK figures, for example, have shown a huge drop in the number of adoptions, a pattern which is also apparent elsewhere in Europe.
Scientific success has its sad side, alas. Perhaps it is now more important for people in countries with exaggerated baby surpluses, as in Africa and some parts of Asia and South America, to be taught more about birth control and contraceptives than anything else.