The country’s top brass have traipsed to Rome for the canonisation ceremony of Dun Gorg Preca and bells will ring out today in joy and pride that a son of Malta is acknowledged as a saint of the Catholic Church – as well he should – but Malta’s name has been shamed all over the civilised world this past week. Can one saint rub away the shame and the ignominy?

The UK paper The Independent devoted its whole front page last Monday to a photo of the illegal immigrants clinging to a tuna net in the open sea south of Malta with one trenchant heading: “Europe’s shame”.

PeaceReporter, an Italian website carried an article by Marco Rovelli entitled “The Indifference of the White Man”, beginning with the Cap Anamur saga, to the callous approach of the Capo Passero fishermen to the many floating bodies of asylum seekers caught in their nets which they cast back into the sea so as to avoid bureaucratic hassles, to the latest episode of the Maltese tug boat Budafel pulling the tuna net and refusing to take on board the 26 illegal immigrants, who had been clinging for long hours to the tuna pen, because the crew was “afraid of them”.

The French Catholic paper La Croix carried an article yesterday with the heading “When human life costs less than that of a tuna”.

Since 1988, almost 9,000 persons have died trying to reach Europe, 6,500 died from drowning, and half of them have never been found. The sea between Sicily, Malta, Libya and Tunisia has claimed 2,000 lives.

The government of Malta has tried arguing that these incidents occurred inside the Libyan Search and Rescue zone and that it is definitely not Malta’s responsibility as Malta is doing ‘over and above’ what it is obliged to do. Legally, the government of Malta may be right.

But the common consensus of international opinion, as well as the pointed and barbed comments by international authorities, thinks otherwise, to Malta’s international shame. Helping shipwrecked people, observed Friso Roscam-Abbing, spokesman for Franco Frattini, vice-president of the European Commission, is not just a moral duty but also a legal duty. No captain can shirk from helping save human lives. And Mr Frattini himself promised that the next meeting of Home Affairs Ministers of the EU, to be held on 11 June, would focus on the proper procedures to be followed in the search for boats in distress. Pointedly, Mr Frattini, while holding off from delivering public criticism of Malta, praised the Spanish ship that took on 26 asylum seekers in the sea between Malta and Libya.

UNHCR praised the Italian navy on Friday for saving the lives last week of 27 shipwrecked Africans who had clung to tuna fishing nets for “three excruciatingly hot days and freezing nights”. Malta and Libya had argued over who should rescue them. It criticised Malta for turning away people rescued at sea and urged it to ratify recent amendments to maritime treaties which aim to ensure people in distress are rescued while minimising the inconvenience for merchant ships which help.

So what point exactly is the Maltese government trying to make while such tragic events unfold on a daily basis? Of course we know that Malta is suffering from an unprecedented onslaught of asylum seekers and that Libya is callously allowing them to risk their lives and attempt the sea crossing.

But shouldn’t something more guide our national actions than just juridical right? What is the use of rejoicing that a Maltese man has been proclaimed saint when the God he believed in said that what is done to the small and the poor is done to Him? Or does our religion stop at the horizon? Or is it limited to outward observances such as festi and fireworks? Why, when people with no religion find it easy to conclude what should be done (even if they are comfortably away from the scene itself) do we seem to find it difficult to think outside the legal box?