We should have cause to wonder how the welfare state is defined in Malta, when the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society are wholly dependent on organisations run by nuns and priests, who in turn are dependent on the charity of private individuals. Though the welfare state is by definition there to protect these very persons, children who have no parents, or who have been abandoned by them, are looked after in homes funded by the Church and by private charity. Those born seriously disabled, who cannot be looked after by their parents, are given shelter and care at Id-Dar tal-Providenza, which is run by a priest and paid for by charity. Now that priest, Monsignor Lawrence Gatt, has had to call a press conference to announce what must be very frightening news to all those who are dependent on Id-Dar Tal-Providenza: providence is failing to deliver the goods; the money is drying up. Annual running costs for the home now stand at Lm1.5 million and there are not enough charitable donations to cover that huge sum. Volleyball marathons, bazaars and other fund-raisers won’t do it. The day of providence appears to be done.

Nobody has yet asked the question: where is the State in all this? The State has a role to play, for it is ultimately responsible for those who are so seriously disabled that they cannot look after themselves, when there are no close relatives to do the caring, or when those relatives are unable to shoulder the tremendous burden. Yet the State, as represented by the government, is lying low and keeping mum, trying to stay out of the equation. I have had cause to write about this before – when we received the shocking news of boys abused at St Joseph Home – and now I find myself having to repeat the argument. The State cannot continue to offload the care of homeless children and the seriously disabled onto the religious organisations and providential charity. This is not the 19th century. This is not deepest, darkest Africa. It’s 2005, and we are now in the European Union. It is inconceivable that the state should continue to wash its hands of the weakest in our midst – children with no home, and children born seriously deformed in such a way that they will always be dependent on others.

Why should Monsignor Gatt have to beg for more and more charity from the people, when those people are paying taxes, among other reasons, so that the most vulnerable among us can be taken care of, instead of being cast out onto the street or hidden in some dark cellar, as would have happened a hundred years ago? What would the government have done had there been no Id-Dar Tal-Providenza? The home was opened 40 years ago, the result of private funding and personal endeavour. Virtually its first resident was a girl baby who would have been my age had she not died a few years ago, after having spent her entire life in the home that her parents were instrumental in setting up. Their child’s tragic, catastrophic condition became the catalyst for something positive: a shelter for others like her, who require 24-hour care for as long as they live. I sometimes wonder what happened to babies like that before the advent of Id-Dar Tal-Providenza. Were they allowed to die, or hidden like a dirty secret by parents too ashamed to admit to their birth?

There are 120 people aged between five and 70 at the home now. They are dependent on charity when they should be dependent on other people’s taxes. The tax money that is wrested from us like blood would be relinquished more readily if we knew that it was going towards making a hellish life more bearable for the vulnerable on whom fate appears to have played a wicked trick. Malta’s children’s homes came into being at a time when the welfare state was not even a figment of the socialist imagination in Europe. There were similar Church-run institutions throughout the continent. It was the only care available to the parentless young. Only Malta continues to retain that system, complete with its ethos, intact, as a substitute for, rather than a complement to, the organisations of the welfare state. Id-Dar Tal-Providenza was conceived in the early 1960s, when the provision by the State of such facilities was unthinkable. It is no longer unthinkable. So why have we retained the status quo? Id-Dar Tal-Providenza, with its dependence on charity, is still the only permanent home for those who cannot even be described with the word ‘disabled’, because that word is hopelessly inadequate. Yet the people it houses have a right to funds and shouldn’t have to be dependent on others to beg charity on their behalf. They are entitled to state funds, and tax-payers want them to have those funds.

Clearly, the situation at Id-Dar Tal-Providenza is untenable – not just financially, but also morally. The government cannot stand by and watch Monsignor Gatt beg for funds with which to take care of 120 people who are unable to take care of themselves. It cannot continue to shift moral and financial responsibility for these people onto the charity of private citizens, as it has continued to do where orphaned and abandoned children are concerned. It is an outrage that these are dependent on the uncertainty of charitable donations while vast amounts of tax revenue go towards a crippling civil servant payroll and other similar Sumerian luxuries.

*****

I sometimes wonder about Mark Montebello, who was in the same year as I was at sixth form college (a very good vintage, that – the Jesuits must be wondering where they went wrong). Why did he become a priest? He seems to have pretty much the same attitude towards the Church as I do, and I would never have thought, not even for the merest split second of wondering what to do with my life, of becoming a nun. The difference, I suppose, is that he is thoroughly engaged in the issues and I am completely disengaged from them, watching in curious detachment the everlasting philosophical entanglement over matters that will mean nothing when we are in our death throes or nailed into our coffins.

Mark seems to be committed to the role of renegade priest, but there’s the rub: it strikes me as being too much of a role. How much good can one do as a renegade priest in an EU member State in 2005? This is not Brazil. It is not life in a novel about tortured Catholicism, by Graham Greene, featuring a priest ultimately redeemed by his fallibility. He can do far more good as a social worker or a member of Greenpeace, and I have a sneaking feeling that he is indeed a social worker manqué. There weren’t many openings in that direction in 1982, when we sat our A-levels and walked out of the doors of St Aloysius College for the last time.

I feel just as strongly as Mark does about many issues. I even share several of his opinions, though I differ sharply from some of his other views. Like Mark does, I speak my mind and cannot even bear to countenance the life that so many others live on their knees. The difference is that I do not have a Mother Superior breathing down my neck and banning me from making my views known for six months. Mark is really missing out, there. Why does he insist on remaining a priest when it seems to bother him so much? One reason might be that when Fr Mark Montebello says something non-conformist, journalists and others take note. But if plain old Mark Montebello were to say the same thing, they wouldn’t. It’s the “dog-walking-on-its-hind-legs” syndrome – astonishing only because it’s a dog doing it, and not astonishing in itself.