With which events will the year 2011 remain linked in your memory?

Mgr De Piro seems to have had an intuition of the way to God through beauty as being more readily accessible to being followed in our times- Fr Peter Serracino Inglott

I have no doubt the events which touched me deepest were those which brought about a crisis in the attitude of the Maltese people to the priesthood.

For me personally it provoked a deep reflection on two different aspects of this experience. It provoked me to reflect more sharply than I had ever done before on the specific vocation of Mgr Joseph De Piro.

What characterises it almost uniquely in my mind is that he felt a call that was to result in a singularly Maltese contribution to the Church. It was, of course, not by accident or chance that the society he founded was named after St Paul.

There seemed to be a mysterious connection between the specific contribution of Paul to the growth of the Church and the fact that the Maltese people were led to spread across the globe more as if caught up in the great migratory movements of entire populations than with specifically missionary intent.

De Piro saw precisely in this dissemination of the Maltese people all over our planet the opening of an extraordinary window of opportunity for us to contribute in our own particular way to the endless task of evangelisation.

The second aspect, which at first seemed to be entirely sad, was linking the priesthood in the minds of many people with the abuse of children. This too has led, for instance, to the production of a small 125-page book, Preti Pedofili?, published by Cittadella Editrice/Assisi, on the subject, written in collaboration between an Italian priest-psychologist Mario Aletti and a Maltese colleague of his, Fr Paul Galea.

It is one of the most carefully written and balanced accounts of the agonising question that was so dramatically forced upon our attention in the course of the year, the end of which we are celebrating.

This book shows there is no special linkage between any aspect of the priesthood itself, such as celibacy, and the temptations of paedophilia, or more precisely ephebophilia, and in that way allows us to form as accurate a picture as possible of the relationship between priesthood and sexuality.

Quite a few books have appeared about Mgr De Piro which are not simply biographical but have begun to delve more deeply into his spirituality. What do you think of the book A Journey of Love/Love Generates Love/ A Fertile Celibate Love, written by Fr Tony Sciberras?

Fr Sciberras has been exploring for some time the Maltese traditions in the area of spiritual direction and seeking to determine if there are any characteristic traits in our tradition. A missionary spirit conceived along the lines of St Paul’s own teachings is without doubt its most prominent mark.

I was most struck by the fact that Fr Sciberras seems to have found the most eloquent expression of Mgr De Piro’s placing of the Divine Love as the great source of his inspiration in a drawing – a visual image that owes much to the Guido Reni painting at the Museum of Fine Arts and certainly one of the most important paintings in our island after Caravaggio’s.

Mgr De Piro seems to have had an intuition similar to that of Hans Urs von Balthasar of the way to God through beauty as being more readily accessible to being followed in our times than that through purely philosophical speculation.

Fr Sciberras shows how closely interwoven are the three strands which constitute the long title of the book; the first being De Piro’s own personal spiritual journey, the second is how this journey produced as its fruits a society and an institution which was to disseminate it both locally through the various institutions the society set up and wherever there was a Maltese emigrant community as well as in the other parts of the world that we think of more usually as missionary countries.

In 1982 the Missionary Society of St Paul, had asked then Archbishop Ġużeppi Mercieca, to start proceedings for the canonisation of Mgr De Piro. In fact, the cause was opened in October 1987. What are the next stages on the way to beatification?

Submissions are being made to the Congregation for the Canonisation of Saints. The so-called Positio, an elaborate document with a comprehensive account of Mgr De Piro’s life and works is being completed. It will first be examined by a team of theologians, and if approved, it will be subsequently examined by another team of cardinals.

If it is once again approved a decree proclaiming the heroic degrees of Mgr De Piro’s virtues will be issued. When a miracle obtained through his intercession is confirmed then beatification will take place.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.