Much has been said and written in these past weeks about the recent clerical child-abuse cases. While fully empathising with the life-altering trauma the victims were subjected to and condemning the disgusting acts committed by these individuals, I feel aggrieved at the way the society of which they were part and the home in which they worked have been constantly highlighted in media reports.
St Joseph Home suffered a lot of bad publicity while journalists were busy spicing up their articles with front-page photos of the home and its sleeping quarters, conveniently forgetting that a number of uncared-for and abandoned boys still live there, boys who consider it as their only home and who in that home never experienced anything except love, support and affection. Boys who are now the stigmatised victims of journalists who seem to have lost their code of ethics.
Unavoidably, the Missionary Society of St Paul too has been thrown in the same negative light. This has compelled me to try and describe the true positive side of the MSSP through the experience I and many others have of this society.
I entered St Paul’s Missionary College in September 1997 for what I can only describe as the best and most memorable five years of my life. I had immediately fallen in love with it after my visit in the open day. I don’t know if it was the spacious classrooms, the clean Rabat air, the football ground and courts or the enormous auditorium. The fact was that, even from my first impression, I realised that this was more than just a school.
And I was not wrong. The school did not just provide for our academic education but as its mission statement says, provided for our holistic education.
School transport used to pick me up at 6.30 a.m. and take me back home at 4 p.m. Quite a long day for an 11- to-16-year-old. Nonetheless, I never remember a day when we got bored. We had almost a total of two hours of break time daily and a whole afternoon once a week in which we could enjoy playing and taking part in extra-curricular activities.
Sports was given its due import-ance. The arts were part and parcel of our curriculum, with lessons in drawing, sculpture, fretwork and the annual operetta, which involved the participation of a large number of students on stage, in the musical ensemble and backstage. No wonder a good number of old boys are today prominent media personalities.
Voluntary work and outreaches were organised and encouraged. The school was also one of the first that recognised the importance of ICT in today’s world, and it was the school that introduced the ECDL certification in Malta.
Free after-school classes were held for those who wanted to take up other extra subjects and, even during summer, skills like typing and banking were taught freely for whoever was interested. And never during my five years there were we asked to fork out a single penny.
I am now able to understand what Fr Gerard Bonello, our former rector, had meant with the words: “You entered here as boys and you will leave as men.” There we grew together in mind, body and spirit, in the light of Mgr Joseph De Piro’s charisma of service, responsibility and civic duty.
Little did I realise in those days, back in 1997, that the new classmates I was meeting and the new friends I was making were not only going to accompany me for the next five years but some of them would become my best buddies till this very day.
Some experiences create bonds that are unbreakable. And our five years at Sant’Agata provided plenty of those experiences. For us, it wasn’t just a school. It was our second home. A home where the Fathers were like fathers and where the class was our family.
Not a family we once were, but a family we still are.
Some of us have carried on in the Christian Life Communities of MSSP ’s CAMYouths, some still help the school in its projects, volunteer in MSSP’s missions abroad or at St Joseph’s Home while others, though maybe no longer in direct contact with the society, still carry the MSSP spirit of mission and service in their families and places of work.
Inasmuch as the acts of a few abusive fathers should not shed bad light on all fathers in general, let not the lewd acts of two individuals tarnish the great contribution this society has made to our nation and, through its foreign missions, to the world, a contribution that is more than ever needed today.
I sincerely augur that the society, the Church and its Response Team, learn the lessons that are to be learnt from this dark episode, and that the victims have the strength and support needed to start a new chapter. I also hope that journalists stop writing lurid details that serve solely to satisfy readers ’ perverted curiosity. We don’t need to know them as we have never needed to know them in other abuse and rape cases before.