This was the weekend when the Pope should have visited Malta.

The last weekend on May had been ticked on the calendar when Pope Francis was to have visited the country.

But the announcement of the visit made on the feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck was followed in March with the news that the visit had to be postponed because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Before then, it had first been said that the Pope would have been in Malta for just one day, Sunday, but plans were in hand to extend the visit to cover also the previous Saturday, which would have been today.

On 11 March the Vatican had given an indication that the visit would have been called off, and the postponement was made official on 23 March.

Malta’s airport has been closed since March because of the pandemic, although there are now indications that it will soon reopen.

No new date has as yet been set for the Pope’s visit to Malta.

It would be the fourth time that a Pope visits Malta. Pope John Paul II had come over in 1990 and 2001, and Pope Benedict XVI visited Malta in 2010.