I refer to Emily Barbaro-Sant’s letter (The Sunday Times of Malta, November 2) concerning the exhumation of the remains of Blessed Maria Adeodata Pisani as recounted in the memoirs of Archbishop Emeritus Ġużeppi Mercieca.
Before writing about the exhumation of Blessed Adeodata, I checked with the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the Archdiocese of Malta.
I was informed that according to the documentation in the tribunal’s archive in Valletta, the exhumation took place on May 4, 2001.
At the point of writing the memoirs, I had absolutely no information of another previous exhumation.
The first time I came to know about this was through a letter Barbaro-Sant wrote in l-Orizzont of October 16.
As soon as this claim came to my knowledge, I contacted the Ecclesiastical Tribunal. The feedback I received was that there was no information in the tribunal’s archive about a 1991 exhumation.
However, following further checking by the tribunal, I was informed that documentation about the 1991 exhumation was traced at the Archbishop’s Curia’s archive.
I understand that the tribunal’s archive had no data about the 1991 exhumation because at the time, such records were being preserved in the Civil Acts section of the Curia’s archive.
It is abundantly clear that it was due to these purely accidental circumstances that the 1991 exhumation was regrettably not mentioned with that of 2001 in Mercieca’s memoirs.
In her letter, Barbaro-Sant repeated what she had already stated in other sections of the press, namely that in Mercieca’s memoirs there is no mention of her late husband Arthur’s work towards the beatification cause of Blessed Adeodata.
The action towards the beatification cause of Sr Adeodata Pisani was initiated by the Madre Badessa of the Benedictine Monastery of St Peter, Mdina, who through a private initiative, appointed Arthur Barbaro-Sant as representative of the monastery and coordinator of the work for the cause.
Barbaro-Sant describes the experience as “nine years”, during which “we worked wholeheartedly for the cause”. Still, Mr Barbaro-Sant’s mandate was withdrawn by the Madre Badessa on June 3, 1997.
Subsequently, on September 15, 1998, Mercieca appointed Mgr Carmel Zammit as Diocesan Coordinator of the Cause for the Beatification of the then Venerable Adeodata Pisani.
Following certain comments made by Barbaro-Sant during a television programme on March 30, 2001, Mercieca declared, through a Curia statement, that “Barbaro Sant knows that he (the Archbishop) took this decision because his directives were not obeyed”.