On 11 June, while visiting Arguineguin in Gran Canaria (Canary Islands), Pope Leo told a gathering of migrants "Before saying anything else to you, I want to bow before your dignity....."

Then on 4 July, America's Independence Day, the Pope visited the island of Lampedusa, just 20km from the coast of Africa, and again spoke about migrants. 

Holding hands with some migrant children, who were accompanied by their pregnant mother, the Pope passed through the Porta d'Europa structure and again asked European leaders to adopt comprehensive humane long-term strategies for migrant protection and integration.

The response was not long in coming: on 31 July, some 80,000 Moroccans, all men, crossed over the flimsy border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, shouting "Freedom" and terrorised the inhabitants by climbing walls and entering closed up properties, ransacking shops and stealing what they could lay their hands upon. These were the migrants that the Pope had bowed down his head to.

Amid massive reactions in Spain mainly directed against Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez who happened to be leaving for his annual holiday, the government quickly  sent in the army.

After some days of running after the invaders, the government claimed that "almost all" the invaders had been  pushed back to Morocco, a claim denied by many terrified citizens who set up impromptu citizen militias to catch those who still remained. 

It is difficult to estimate how many are still running around but these must be getting hungry and tired after sleeping rough night after night.

Then the European governments intervened and the situation became more serious. Italy's Giorgia Meloni suspended the Schengen agreement with Spain and closed the borders and Spain retaliated likewise. There was a flurry of meetings, the situation dragged on. By mid-week the attention shifted elsewhere.

The amount of migrants who had been forcibly repatriated remained a trickle.

But Spain, for geographical reasons, needs the frontier with Italy to remain open.

The result was a first class political battle within Europe. Spain remained relatively isolated and some allies, notably Poland, have a regime which puts even Italy's to shame.

Morocco gets all channels of Spanish TV and, just as had happened in East Germany before the Wall fell, people on the other side had a completely unrealistic idea about the West.

As many said later, they thought money grew on trees and their idea of freedom did not include policemen wielding batons.

There might have also been some hidden agent/s at work. This would become clearer if there's a repeat of the invasion.

The Ceuta crisis was keenly followed in Malta which now has migrant figures to compare with Ceuta's.

The two main parties continued to downplay the gravity of the situation and to call anybody who dares raise the issue a racist and trouble-maker. 

The EU continues to grow and grow. Remember in the early 1990s when a ship packed with famished Albanians suddenly arrived in Maltese waters? (I remember for I flew over the ship for some time).

Now go and visit Albania, with its expanse of pristine beaches, its exciting innovative tower blocks and wide streets.

The so-called Maltese entrepreneurs who hurried and bought large swathes of land burned their fingers and withdrew. (The exceptions were religious persons who are still there and doing a sterling job and have fully integrated despite a difficult language).

With a hiccup or two (or maybe two hundred) the new countries of the Balkans and the Caucasus including Ukraine are disengaging from Moscow and undertaking the long trek to the West.

The Moroccans must understand that it will not be with bravado tactics that they can move forward. They already had the Arab Spring which was smothered in blood, repression and Muslim fundamentalism and petered out.

There are some fundamental issues such as the place of women which the Muslim world must face before it can move ahead.

This cannot be achieved through empty slogans or paternalism nor through wars of conquest but through courageous steps. After all, other religions did so and moved on and thrived.

A note of history 

Writing in the Mosta Festa publication, Sergio Grech analyzes the 30 mentions of Mosta in the four-volume masterpiece Rajt Malta tinbidel by Herbert Ganado.

Special mention is made of the International Eucharistic Congress of 1913 which, coming a year after a bout of cholera, risked failing to reach its aims.

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