I find it comforting listening to church bells marking the quarters and the hours, reminding one of Angelus prayer times, signalling benediction or marking special occasions. Such decades or more old bell-towers are worthy of preservation with their attendant function and not silenced. They were built by believing communities in their midst. Others who have fallen away or moved in should respect these givens and not try to alter our traditions. And its shows surely a backward stance not commensurate with the Gospel’s mandates of proclamation the silencing of church bells!

His Holiness Pope Benedict in a video message to participants in the International Retreat for Priests held in the bridging week between September and October made a remark which struck me also within the local context. Amongst others he said: “when we are travelling and see a bell-tower, this view should quicken our heart beat, just as the sight of the roof of her beloved’s dwelling place quickens the bride’s heart beat”. This quote Pope Benedict elicited from the book on the Cure D’Ars, St John Mary Vianney’s by Abbe Bernard Nodet.

The Pontiff also had an encouraging word for bishops, parish priests and church rectors when he continued “Here I would like to greet with very special affection all those of you who have pastoral responsibility for several bell-towers and spend yourselves, without counting the cost to keep up the sacramental life in your respective communities.”

At the beginning of this address Pope Benedict had made his own the priests’ patron saint’s words “A good pastor, a pastor according to the heart of God, is the greatest treasure that the good Lord can give to a parish and one of the most precious gifts of divine mercy”.

Could one not ponder that the dates established for Pope Benedict’s next year’s visit to our islands, so close to Divine Mercy Sunday and to the feast of St Publius, the first Bishop and Maltese saint of the first millennium, be taken perhaps as a note of thanks from the Universal Pastor to the two small dioceses, particularly Gozo, which proportionally might have given the church the most priests?

Joseph G. Bonett

Ghajnsielem