Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca blows a kiss to the crowd. Photos: Chris Sant Fournier

People usually crowd the streets of Qormi twice a year – on the feasts of the patron saints and on Easter Sunday – but they did so again yesterday: to bid farewell to Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca.

With church bells pealing, petards were let off to salute the second President of Malta to hail from Qormi.

Well-wishers standing in front of St George’s parish church greeted her by her first name and waving Maltese flags.

“We never called her ‘honourable minister’ or by her surname because she is not pretentious.

“She enters everybody’s home and when I had a problem she opened her door for me and welcomed me in her own home,” Mary Farrugia, 62, said.

We are losing a pillar in Qormi. Without ever looking at your political colour, Marie-Louise made our problems her own and spoke to everyone

“I became emotional when I learnt that Marie-Louise was becoming our next President because it meant we were losing a pillar in Qormi.

“Without ever looking at your political colour, Marie-Louise made our problems her own and spoke to everyone. Just a few days ago, I was waiting for the bus, distracted, and Marie-Louise waved at me.

“She is one of us and power never got to her head,” Ċensina Debono, 61, added.

When she arrived at the town’s square, Ms Coleiro Preca shed tears as she hugged, waved and blew kisses to the well-wishers gathered close to where she used to live before she moved to Balzan with her husband, Edgar Preca.

People started gathering in the square two hours before she was meant to stop in her hometown at 4.40pm on her way to St Sebastian parish and then to the Palace in Valletta.

Anna Mifsud, who has known Ms Coleiro Preca for about 20 years, left Ħamrun for Qormi at 2.30pm to make sure she would not miss her arrival.

Ms Mifsud, 62, sat on the Labour Party’s executive with Ms Coleiro Preca.

“I don’t love Marie-Louise because she is a close acquaintance but because she has always been humble. Her last message to me two weeks ago was: ‘Do not forget that I have always been, am and will remain a woman of the people’,” she said with tears in her eyes.

She recalled that, after attending meetings of the party executive in Ħamrun, Ms Coleiro Preca would pick her daughter up from Qormi, say the rosary and then drop Ms Mifsud at home.

Saviour Bianci, 44, said he felt obliged to bid farewell to Ms Coleiro Preca following the support his parents received from her parents.

His partner, Connie Muscat, 46, from Luqa, noted how Ms Coleiro Preca had followed in her family’s footsteps and always lent a helping hand.

“You could call her anytime, even at 5.30am, and if she couldn’t answer, she would call back,” she said.

Roderick Sapiano, 28, from Rabat, has only lived in Qormi for a little more than a year but he felt she “deserved a good farewell”.

He believes Ms Coleiro Preca will be “the President that unites the Maltese”.