As I am writing this contribution, I am sharing with all the Maltese the joy that the occasion of the canonisation of our Dun Gorg brings. It is truly a national occasion of heartfelt blessings that the Lord has put on us all, and that unites us as a proud Christian Nation.

Truly, Dun Gorg had clearly manifested a life of holiness and, in his humility, he has shown that the truly great persons are the most humble. In his life he took it unto himself to spread the true word of the Lord and if nothing, his words rocked the foundations of how we prepared our young for real life, through the words of the Gospel.

To understand the genius and unique thinking of Dun Gorg we have to place ourselves in Malta at the turn of the other century. The then current wars had made Malta a hub of military activity, when little else economically happened. Malta was a rather poor colonial extension of the British Empire and poverty was not only evident but a fact of life, where the main help the destitute used to receive was the saying “Alla jghinek” (God will help you).

In this environment Dun Gorg understood well – like his fellow citizen of the epoch Manuel Dimech – that the roots of all poverty were not merely the politics of Imperialism and its economics only, but that these also lay in ignorance and indignity. Although differently, they both embarked in the education of the poor, striving to build up the fabric of society, in order to find the solutions and the energy to rid the predicament of hopelessness and to set the foundations for a deep-rooted motivation for personal growth. While they looked at the issue in different ways – one political and the other spiritual – they both wanted the same thing: the enhancement of the self, man in the true image of God, in an environment of love and dignity, as we are meant to be.

The hand of God can be seen mostly in the simplest ideas. The simplicity of the Gospel is the best tool to spirituality, only however if they can be understood, and by far that was the mammoth task before Dun Gorg. In an age of ignorance and superstition, even those who could read had difficulty to understand the Gospel because these were mainly available in Latin. Indeed how could one further Christianity if not through better communication?

So Dun Gorg embarked to break several bastions of the then prevailing dominant culture. He set out to preach and explain the bible in Maltese, and this to give all the benefit of its understanding in our language. More revolutionary, was the aim to make available religious education for all. Religiously educating the working class was indeed a novel idea. The idea of gathering children under a roof and educate them, was indeed an experience for a lot of children. But to do all this and extend it to both genders, was by far his genius; the equal of which we are still struggling to incorporate in our so-called egalitarian society.

The spiritual and sociological benefits of these revolutionary ideas have benefited all Maltese, especially the poor and the working class. The trueness of all this greatness is then again witnessed in his true humility and the extension of his committed love of the Lord, to humanity in general. Living Christian values seems easy, but in fact is very hard.

Dun Gorg not only lived Christian values, but laid them in our value structure. A contribution that does not only make him holy, and now saintly, but also a unique builder of our moral foundations, in a society where the true “elite” should also be the humblest.

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Dr Michael Falzon is the MLP Deputy Leader for party affairs