St Publius: The first Maltese saint

St Publius was "born in Malta" but he was not "of Roman lineage" as a correspondent recently claimed. How do we know St Publius was Maltese? Malta at the time was under the Romans. The Romans used to avoid administering the countries they used to conquer themselves, especially small countries like Malta with a few hundred inhabitants whom they considered to be barbarians since they did not speak Latin or Greek.

Which Roman governor would be willing to come to this small island? Once the Romans used to conquer a colony, they would offer by tender to the highest bidder, the management of the colony. The highest bidder, who would offer Rome the highest sum of money, was then responsible himself for collecting the money from the inhabitants of the colony in order to run the country and to pay the tribute he was committed to give to Rome.

This saved the Romans the intrigue of administering the tax collection process. Apart from that, this also had the advantage that Rome was not seen as "collecting taxes"; the governor, who in the case of Malta was another Maltese inhabitant, was seen as the one imposing taxes.

The governor had the duty of implementing Roman law and order in the country. Thus, due to the fact that the governor was not Roman, the inhabitants in extreme cases would not revolt against Rome, but would protest against the Maltese governor who was seen to be a "traitor" of his own people.

The same case used to apply for tax collectors mentioned in the holy Gospel. It is obvious, although not written in the Acts, that St Publius was very gentle to the Maltese people. Had this not been the case, he surely would have not accepted convicts in his house and, surely, he would not have allowed one of these convicts, St Paul, to preach the gospel.

Another proof that St Publius was Maltese is the fact that he owned property in Malta in the limits of Burmarrad. The name of this village Bur Marrad literally means "the sickly village". This is due to the fact that in the area a lot of water used to gather from nearby valleys. Many times the water used to become stale and people who drank were at risk of getting dysentery, the same sickness mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, which the father of St Publius suffered from when he was cured by St Paul.

No Roman would ever own an estate in such a poor and sickly village in Malta. The Romans were after fame and glory, and one could not obtain these on such a small island. Publius was doing Rome a "favour" in administering such an island and we are to assume that he was kept in the good books of his Roman superiors. This earned Publius the title of Protos (chief man of the Island and representative of his people) as mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles.

I hope these few lines have convinced the stubborn majority that St Publius is in fact Maltese. St Gorg Preca, founder of the Society of Christian Doctrine, of which I was a member myself for a number of years, is the first canonised Maltese saint. However, St Publius is the first Maltese saint. I recognise the greatness of both saints; however, I dare to say that without St Publius, the Christian faith on these Islands would have not reached our shores, had he disallowed St Paul from preaching the Gospel, and had he not accepted such Gospel himself.

All the Maltese should be devoted to St Publius. However as is always the case, we can never accept the fact that our nation is as good as other nations in the world. This is the case in sports, music and in most other areas in which we, as a nation, compete or participate.

The Maltese pessimism always reigns - we can never accept the fact that we have a potential. In our case, we simply cannot accept the fact that, since the times of the Apostles, when many countries did not even know about Christ, Malta had its first saint - St Publius.