Malta facing identity problem - President

Shaun Cassar, a 13-year-old from Zejtun attending St Paul's Missionary College in Rabat, was yesterday presented with the 2005 Pope John XXIII prize for Kindness by President Eddie Fenech Adami.

He won the award for helping Matthew Chetcuti, a student suffering from cerebral palsy, who attends the same school. The boy has to resort to a K walker using both hands and so cannot carry books and other items.

Mr Cassar voluntarily offers his help and gives Mr Chetcuti continuous attention keeping him company at all times and assisting him even in his free time.

Dr Fenech Adami congratulated Mr Cassar on the award and said his kindness was an inspiration to everyone.

The President also referred to bio ethics, pointing out what Pope Benedict XVI had written that although the position of the Church was clear, the state should draw up its own regulations on experimentation, which would not be based so much on religious beliefs but on anthropological arguments. The traditional family, for example, was anthropologically essential to the building of a strong society.

The country, Dr Fenech Adami said, was going through an identity problem because of a wave of ideas and theories under the guise of freedom of thought and expression. These were theories that have destroyed the identity of many societies, he said.