Acts of devotion are ingrained in Maltese culture. For many centuries the Maltese lived under the eyes of the Church. In the 16th century, the Maltese were ruled by three entities: the Knights of St John, the Bishop and the papal Inquisitor.

These three entities were independent from each other and fought between themselves for the attention and devotion of the Maltese. Therefore the Maltese had to please three different masters and it was very easy to offend one of them. All three rewarded spies who reported on wrongdoings of others who were imprisoned in the respective prison when found guilty.

Mr Lanfranco pointed out that many of the religious devotions remained when the British took over Malta as they were solely concerned with Malta as a strategic naval base. As long as the Maltese did not disobey the government, they were allowed to continue practising their devotions. For this reason many devotions continued to be practised and are still practised today.

People were brought up very much within the Church. Mr Lanfranco explained that pre-World War II, every action had a religious deed associated with it and everything was subject to devotional thought. For example more than one sign of the cross was made throughout the day i.e. when the person woke up, before going out, before entering a building, before eating and so on.

In the past people would kiss the hands of priests when they met them in the road and kiss all sacred statues in church. If a person found a piece of bread in the road he/she would pick it up and put it aside so that it would not be trampled on. The reasoning behind this practice was that people would not step on the holy host, which is what bread symbolically represented.

Each family had their own devotional, personalised corner in the house. This corner would have the holy pictures of the family’s favourite saint as well as rosary beads and a small oil lamp lit for 24 hours. In fact this practice was taken to such an extreme that

Mr Lanfranco said there was a family who suffered from constipation and kept a picture of the Holy Mary in the bathroom to help out.

Mr Lanfranco explained that hundreds of holy pictures were printed for different reasons. If for example, during confession a person admitted to saying something untrue about a friend or neighbour, as a form of penance the priest would give the person two choices. Either the person printed a carefully worded holy picture admitting the wrongdoing and apologising for his sin. This would be distributed to the community. The second option was to confess from the pulpit of the church to the community before or after Mass. However, Mr Lanfranco pointed out that most people preferred confessing their sins from the pulpit to printing the holy picture as the printed word was a constant reminder of the sin.

Another devotion popular with parents before World War II was dressing up children in a characteristic outfit to keep a vow they made. The parents would pray to a particular saint to intercede on their behalf, vowing that if their prayers were granted, they would dress up their children as St Francis or St Anthony or Our Lady of Lourdes among others. Although the children did not wear the outfit every day, but on the feast days of that particular saint, it was extremely humiliating for them. Girls even had their dolls dressed up in the same outfit to keep them company.

Most of the customs were introduced by the different communities of friars and priests to promote devotion to a particular saint. However, Mr Lanfranco pointed out that devotions caused an oppressive atmosphere as people were always observed and criticised by someone else. In fact many classrooms had two pictures hanging on the wall. One picture depicted a dying person who was being taken to hell by the devil and the other picture showed a dying person being taken to heaven by angels. These pictures were used by the teachers as a warning and were a constant reminder of where the path of evil would lead.

Mr Lanfranco also explained that the three days of carnival were considered to be a great sin. In fact many religious communities organised activities for children during the carnival period to keep them away from the festivities. These good intentions were defeated when a terrible tragedy took place in 1823 and 113 children died in a stampede in a Franciscan friary in Valletta. The children were taken for a walk and when they returned to the monastery they were given sweets as a reward for being good, but, in the narrow dark passage-ways of the friary, some of the children panicked and the younger ones were trampled to death by the older children.

Although devotions and religion are not practised as often as they were in the past, Mr Lanfranco emphasised that it is important not to impose them on people as the whole idea behind them will be lost.