Fancy celebrating the first Sunday in Lent, which is dedicated to the Laity, swift on the heels of the announcement of the programme for the Papal visit – which shows that for Benedict’s first visit to the islands, one of the two dioceses will be completed excluded!

Fancy celebrating the first Sunday in Lent, which is dedicated to the Laity, swift on the heels of the announcement of the programme for the Papal visit – which shows that for Benedict’s first visit to the islands, one of the two dioceses will be completed excluded!

Another important visitor to these islands about 200 years ago, despite the somewhat primitive transport contraptions of the period and the many calls on his time from his war-torn empire, was Napoleon, who still found time to visit Gozo and sleep at the St Francis Convent in Victoria, though he was not on good terms with the Church.

Admittedly, although His Holiness Benedict XVI might be much frailer than was Napoleon, he could not possibly wish for more faithful subjects than the Gozitans, whose diocese has been described, by one good at figure crunching, as possibly the one that has, proportionately, given the Church the most vocations. Would it not be possible, with the modern means of transport available, for the Pope to, say, cross over to Gozo and just sleep at the Seminary in Victoria instead of at the Nunciature in Tal-Virtu and then return to Malta in the morning for the rest of the programme? Or are the Laity’s suggestions, in the post Vatican II era, still not being taken up, and their contributions confined to subsidising such excessive and unnecessary expense as the hiring of chairs for the Papal celebrations, when chairs and benches could be transported from nearby churches in Valletta, Floriana and their environs?

C. Debono

GHAJNSIELEM