MUSEUM boys' sermon in Gozo

The commentary in the 'Gozo Newsletter' (The Sunday Times, June 3) stated that the MUSEUM Gozo Branch for boys started on the initiative of Emanuel Bianco of Hamrun on April 23, 1941. This is correct.

What is incorrect is that the first Christmas sermon of the MUSEUM was not delivered by Professor Peter Serracino Inglott but by the young boy Anton Zammit Gabarretta (later on a priest in Vittoriosa) who was a refugee with his family and was a member of MUSEUM.

He delivered his sermon in St James Chapel, at it-Tokk, on Christmas Eve 1941 at about 5 p.m. after the MUSEUM Christmas procession with Baby Jesus. This event is even recalled by Emanuel Bianco himself.

Professor Serracino Inglott, who at the time was a refugee with his family, who lived in Charity Street, Victoria, was by then not a member of the MUSEUM.

However he did deliver a Christmas sermon as a boy at Pompei church, Victoria, most probably in 1942.

This had nothing to do with the MUSEUM sermon organised by Emanuel Bianco, but was a nice initiative of Mrs Vincenza Dimech, a refugee and a good woman, who wished to start the boy's Christmas sermon tradition in Gozo. Another boy chosen to deliver this sermon at the Pompei church during the war was Dr Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, President Emeritus.