From Mr J. Guillaumier

Dun Gorg never appealed to me. I associate him with all that is backward and narrow-minded in Maltese Catholicism, and with a set of odd regulations for the members of the society he founded.

The men of Dun Gorg’s society were the ultimate “squares”! So much so, that Dun Gorg’s society of grave and sombre men gave rise to a derisive term, implying someone who is odd and austere – qiesek tal-muzew!

Summer and winter, Dun Gorg’s grave and serious men always wore suits with shirt oddly buttoned at the collar but with no tie, lest they appeared vain and worldly about their appearance.

Many of them wore their hair cropped close to their scalps, similar to the inmates of a

concentration camp.

For Dun Gorg’s men, sex was the ultimate taboo and their pet aversion. Only God knows how many priests in the confessional these men pestered with their “scruples”!

Dun Gorg’s female followers, most of whom were illiterate or uneducated, covered themselves up in black faldettas, decades before the Taliban decreed similar garb for their women!

For some reason or other, the society founded by Dun Gorg was officially suppressed by the Church. This dark chapter in Dun Gorg’s biography is simply glossed over in the rush to canonise and apotheosise him.

John Guillaumier

ST JULIAN’S