Will it be a good Good Friday?

Next Friday is one of the most solemn and devout celebrations in the calendar of the Catholic Church. We celebrate the Passion and death of Our Lord - a death which saved us from our sins; reconciled us with ourselves, our neighbours and God; and destroyed the barrier between believer and gentile.

One hopes that next Friday's celebrations in Malta will reflect all this and that they will not create tension and division within the Catholic community. We feel the need to express this hope because we believe that these fundamental values associated with the celebration of Good Friday are seriously threatened.

All of us have read of the tragi-comedy developing in Gozo. It is a pity and a shame; in fact a great shame. The facts that have been brought to the attention of the public are the following:

There is an agreement between the two parishes of Victoria - that of the Cathedral and that of St George - which stipulates that each parish conduct the Good Friday procession on alternate years.

On the other years the Cathedral parish holds its procession on Palm Sunday while St George's parish has its procession on Maundy Thursday.

This year it was the Cathedral's turn to hold the procession on Good Friday.

St George's parish wants to hold its Good Friday procession on Friday morning. The reason given is that since this is the Year dedicated to the Eucharist they prefer to let Maundy Thursday be dedicated to Eucharistic adoration and to have their procession on Good Friday in the morning.

It seems that the Bishop of Gozo accepted this line of reasoning and gave his go-ahead.

The Cathedral parish objected and the archpriest resigned.

The ball is now in the court of the police, who are faced with two requests for Good Friday morning. One by St George's parish for the Good Friday procession and the other by the band club of the Cathedral parish for band marches in the morning.

People from Victoria tell us that there is a lot of tension brewing up and they say that they don't know what its effect will be. It is very unfortunate that the run-up to these most holy of feasts is not being marked by prayerful devotion but by piques, tension and division. This is totally unnecessary. Worse than this, the situation is a scandalous one.

Even if one were to accept the overt reason given by St George's parish (and many find this reason hard to believe), the following question is more than pertinent: since the Eucharist is about unity and love should one propose a particular kind of Eucharistic devotion which is endangering disunity and hatred?

Since the Eucharist is the basis of any Christian community, should one endanger the collapse of Christian parish communities? Does it make sense to approach such a holy feast engulfed in the kind of tension that is building up?

We hope that by Friday the people of good will present in both parishes will prevail.