Last Wednesday, the Centenary of the foundation by Mgr Joseph de Piro of the Missionary Society of St Paul, now caught up in a paedophile contestation, was celebrated. How did you come to be involved as a main speaker at the launching of Fr Martin Cilia's book on the subject entitled Found Among Sinners?
Giuseppe de Piro has always been to me, as to Fr Cilia, an enigmatic figure. On one hand, I first heard about him when I was still more of a boy than a man in a political context.
He had been not only a member of the Senate, or Second Chamber of our Parliament, but had played an effective role as mediator in a Church-Strickland conflict. On the other hand, I also heard stories about him from his nephew, the Baron Jerome de Piro, who used to be my main assistant when I was National Chaplain of the French Speaking Community and whose house (now Casa Rocca Piccola) was still on free loan to the Young Christian Workers for some years when I was their chaplain.
I know, for instance, that when once Mgr de Piro was accompanied by Jerome on a visit to Rome, the uncle gently hinted that he wished to take back to Malta some souvenirs for the boys and girls under his care, but needed his nephew to pay for them. Jerome asked how many of them there were and whether rosary beads would be appropriate to get for the girls. Uncle Giuseppe answered that there were a "dozen dozen" girls and that face powder-puff cases would be more suitable.
Plainly, de Piro's personality was a multi-faceted paradox; he could exceptionally resort to aristocratic, diplomatic protocol as when dealing with Lord Strickland, but behaved with the most homely affability towards everyone.
Almost immediately after his return to Malta from his studies in Rome in the first decade of the 20th Century, he set about founding the Missionary Order that he felt to be part of the island's vocation to launch. Its aim was primarily to make God known through privileged attention to the poor in distant lands as well as in his home country.
However, he could never either join the Order that he himself founded, nor go to Ethiopia to join the first Brother whom he had sent there. The reason was that Bishop Maurus Caruana kept assigning various key tasks to him and he felt that as a priest he should always prefer carrying out uncomplainingly his bishop's will rather than fulfilling his own desires even if he was convinced they were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
I only came to get an insight into the psychology of de Piro from reading Fr Cilia's book, which is not a biography but an outline of the spirituality of the priest who is still far better known for his socio-political work than for the deep contemplative knowledge of Jesus Christ that he so passionately pursued throughout his not-long life.
Fr René Camilleri was a fellow panellist with you at the book launch. What was the perception he gave of the MSSP's role in the Maltese Church as de Piro originally conceived it and as it has developed?
Fr Camilleri stressed the historic context in which de Piro contributed a tessera to a mosaic. Others, like St Ġorġ Preca, almost exactly de Piro's contemporary although longer lived, also contributed their own distinctive bits.
The time (the 1870s) was just a few years after Vatican Council I. The Church was striving to recoup from the crisis it had undergone through confrontation with the forces of rampant nationalism, militant secularism and the Industrial Revolution. In fact, it was shortly before the publication by Leo XIII of the first great Social Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, in which the Pope outlined what became the basic tenets of Christian democracy as a third way distinct from either free-market capitalism or state-centred communism.
However, Fr Camilleri stressed that what characterised even the political involvement of de Piro, which was never animated by partisanship or power-seeking, but was very concrete commitment to social justice, was his passionate love of God whose presence he felt deeply in the very flesh-and-blood of suffering humanity.
I had referred to Hans Urs von Balthassar's ecclesiology. The Church did not have just the pastoral function of Peter and his successors, which highlighted the Good Shepherd aspect of Jesus Christ. There was also the missionary function first illustrated by Paul, who highlighted the Good-News-bearing aspect of the Christ, as there was also the contemplative function emphasised by the Apostle John.
De Piro had placed himself and his community squarely in the tradition of St Paul. However, Fr Camilleri stressed that these differences in style were only variations on the unique course of spirituality that mattered, namely as the same von Balthassar put it, being a great lover.
You sought to compare the Pauline heritage in de Piro's reception of it as brought out by Fr Cilia with that of two other founders of religious communities named after St Paul. Will you elaborate on this?
In the 16th Century, Anthony Zaccaria established a three-branched Order with its centre in the church of St Barnabas in Milan, just before the beginning of the Council of Trent. Growth in the Spirit is the Pauline trait most stressed by him. De Piro very frequently used the image of the wind that drove the ship of St Paul to our islands to signify the breath of the Holy Spirit.
Closer to us, Don Alberione founded the well-known Pauline family devoted primarily to the mass media. He said that Paul in our day would have been a journalist.
De Piro much more profoundly saw in Paul's original putting into words of the mysteries of faith both a mystical participation in the Trinitarian function of Jesus as the Word and the therapeutic value of expressing openly one's inner problems.
Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.