Confetti and cannon mark feast of St Paul

After a few days of cold weather and ominous clouds, yesterday's blue skies meant that festa enthusiasts could go to Valletta to attend the celebrations marking the Shipwreck of St Paul.

Confetti, thrown as part of the jubilation from windows and balconies, fluttered in the air, later coating the street in a layer of white paper, turning a usually busy road into a children's playing field. But it was not only children who enjoyed playing with the strips of paper; some young men also ended up rolling on the ground.

At St Paul's Shipwreck church, Archbishop Paul Cremona led a Pontifical Mass, attended by President Eddie Fenech Adami, among others.

For the first time in years, the eight cannon at the Upper Barrakka Gardens were fired to mark the feast, a tradition lost from the time of the Knights.

The feast is one of the most important in Malta's Catholic calendar, marking the shipwreck in Malta of St Paul, who is believed to have converted the island to Catholicism.