All saints live in harmony in Heaven

While doing some research I came along a truly rash and uncalled for statement from no less than Mgr Charles Scicluna, who was the postulator of St George Preca. When on TV programme Xarabank he declared that: “In fact apart from being the particular patron saint of the town of Floriana, St Publius is also one of the patron saints of Malta. St Publius was never canonised as all the biblical saints, so he is not recognised as Malta’s first saint for that reason.” Such rash and uncalled for statements confirms what I had written as recently as July 12, 2011 in my letter titled How Religion In Malta Goes To Extremes. To be exact I had originally named my letter Wither The Maltese Religion?

Even belatedly I have to answer and comment on Mgr Scicluna’s statement. (a) So according to him, St Paul, St Peter, all the apostles and hundreds of martyrs, early doctors and other confessors of the Church are not saints. (b) Not recognised by whom? The Vatican and the Popes recognise St Publius. (c) Canonisation, whether formal or informal, does not make someone a saint: it is only a declaration that the person is a saint and was a saint even before canonisation. (d) Surely Xarabank is not the right serious venue for such a discussion, especially when there was no one to speak to the contrary. (e) The glorification of saints follows from the official recognition of saints that grows from the consensus of the Church. God may or may not choose to glorify the individual through the manifestation of miracles.

Another aspect of his rash statement is that St Publius is first and foremost a particular patron saint of the town of Floriana. He has it all wrong.

St Publius had been venerated in Malta for many centuries. He was declared the Patron Saint of Malta by Pope Paul V in 1610, at a time when Floriana did not even exist and well before Floriana’s bastions had been designed by Pietro Floriani and eventually became a residential area under Grand Master Villhena. The chapel in that area (and not the first in Malta) was built after all the bastions were constructed and this happened more than a century later (in the 18th century). Thus, Mgr Scicluna should not put the cart before the horse.

Let him by all means strive for St Ġorġ Preca of whom we are all proud, but not minimise the role of St Publius in accepting the Christian faith in our islands. There is no holy pique between saints in heaven, except in the tiny island of Malta. All this is due to a strong degree of hatred and spite from certain quarters and the intransigence of the Maltese Church in not undertaking a truly independent study, including Greek scholars, of the history of Christianity in Malta. Instead of Christian love, we are after each other’s blood. In the meantime, who is going to make good for all the fabrications and misinformation that has now become an intrinsic part of the information available on the internet? Will Mgr Scicluna have the courage to reply and face me in a public debate?