Wartime University Home Guard is nominated Malta’s second cardinal

The Pope yesterday nominated Fr Prospero Grech as cardinal, nearly 200 years after the election of the first and only Maltese cardinal.

The news, which some Maltese have been awaiting for decades, came yesterday at noon right after Pope Benedict XVI recited the Angelus.

Although he had been given the news some three days ago, the Augustinian theologian had to keep mum until it was officially announced. The nomination came as a surprise to the 86-year-old.“It was a surprise. To tell you the truth I never expected it. The Pope, whom I worked with for 20 years when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was generous and showed me his gratitude with this nomination,” he said when contacted. Fr Grech, who was made a Companion of the National Order of Merit by President George Abela last month, said he would continue his work as a theologian and researcher but would do his best to complete any task assigned to him by the Church when he was elected cardinal in February.

The Pope said he would hold a consistory – an assembly of the whole body of cardinals presided over by the Pope – where he would elect a number of cardinals.

The Maltese Curia expressed “great joy” at the mention of a Maltese cardinal and the bishops said they considered the appointment as a personal tribute to Fr Grech and recognition of the Maltese Church’s contribution to the universal Church.

The Maltese Augustinian Province congratulated Fr Grech and the government said the election was an honour for Malta.

Fr Grech was born in Vittoriosa in 1925. He studied at the Lyceum and served as a gunner in the Home Guard of the University during the war.

In 1943, he joined the Augustinian Order and was ordained priest in Rome seven years later. He studied in Rome and Oxford among others and was appointed lecturer in theology at the Augustinian Institute in Rabat in 1959. Later on, he became a professor at the Augustinian Institute in Rome and, together with Fr Agostino Trapè, he founded the Istituto Patristico Augostinianum in 1970.

Fr Grech is also a councillor of the Congregation of the Faith at the Holy See.

The first Maltese cardinal was Fabrizio Sceberras Testaferrata who was elevated to cardinal in 1818.