Pope Francis’ long-awaited visit to the Maltese islands has come and gone. A momentous occasion, the Pope’s visit brought a country together only a week after the divisiveness of an electoral campaign.
Throughout his two-day visit, Pope Francis shared messages which the country must heed if it is to move forward with the greatest good in mind.
The first of those messages was in the Pope’s first speech, in the Grandmaster’s Palace in Valletta, where he said that Malta must fight illegality and corruption, and to keep the natural environment safe from greed and speculation.
“Honesty, justice, a sense of duty and transparency are the essential pillars of a mature civil society. May your commitment to eliminate illegality and corruption be strong, like the north wind that sweeps the coasts of this country," the Pope said.
On Malta’s environment, meanwhile, the Pope said that “it must be kept safe from rapacious greed, from avarice and from construction speculation. Instead, protecting the environment and the promotion of social justice are optimal ways to instil in young people a passion for healthy politics and to shield them from the temptation to indifference and lack of commitment,” he added.
This is a message of great significance. It is a message to those in power, which is so clear that it barely needs to be elaborated on.
Migration and the treatment of migrants was a matter on the Pope’s agenda from the get-go, with the Vatican describing the trip as the Pope following in St. Paul’s, who took refuge in Malta after a shipwreck, footsteps.
The Pope urged Malta to be the same “safe harbour” it was to St. Paul to migrants who now try to cross the Mediterranean and warned against “adopting an anachronistic isolationism”.
Migration has been a sensitive topic in recent years. Politicians insist that Malta is “full up” to migrants coming from Africa, and the public discourse, particularly on social media, remains rife with discourse verging on the racist when a matter concerning such migrants reaches the news headlines.
One doesn’t need to look far: as the Pope arrived in Malta, 106 migrants remained stranded in the Mediterranean after being rescued by an NGO ship. They were eventually allowed into Sicily, as Maltese authorities ignored them.
The discourse on comment boards surrounding these migrants, many of whom are escaping situations of instability and war, was markedly different from the discourse on accepting refugees from Ukraine.
Finally, in his homily during the Papal Mass on Sunday in Floriana, the Pope spoke of the need for mercy and for reconciliation, and also subtly warned against the hypocrisy of man – a message which was supported by the Gospel of the day, which focused on the woman caught in adultery and Jesus’ invitation to those without sin to cast the first stone, a stone which is never cast. The implication is that nobody is faultless and that, therefore, nobody has the right to pass judgement on others.
This is a message for society as a whole. A society which has become so entrenched in its own image of itself and in an insistence that life must be lived only as they see fit and that living life otherwise would be wrong.
We live in a society where people have become so focused – perhaps with the aid of social media – on others that they sometimes forget to look in the mirror and focus on themselves and how they are living their own lives.
Are we living our life to its fullest? Are we living our life with the intention of helping others? Do we seek, in our words and deeds, to build people up? Or do we try our best to tear them down? Do we embrace the differences that exist between ourselves? Or do we use those differences to drive even more of a divisive stake between us?
The answers to these questions are not for this editor to give, but they are for each reader to seek and to ponder.
Pope Francis has come to the islands and gone. May his words linger for a lot longer than his two-day visit.