I found the article ‘Priest’s diary sheds light on last years of the knights and the blockade of the French in Malta’ (May 30) very interesting.

The article said the Senglea manuscripts “are believed to have been penned by a priest, Fr Franciscus Xaverius Baldacchino, who was a member of the Oratorian Congregation of St Philip Neri”.

During my research for my master’s dissertation about the 1837 cholera in Malta I looked up the sermons delivered by Fr Francesco Saverio Baldacchino during the first four decades of the 19th century. The sermons were written by Fr Baldacchino in 30 odd volumes currently kept at the library of the Oratory of St Philip Neri, in Senglea. One particular sermon given at the feast of Porto Salvo (or Visitation of Our Lady to Elizabeth) on July 2, 1837 during the cholera epidemic was also dated as having been given on the same feast day in 1813 during the plague epidemic (pictured above).

I also examined the manuscripts at the Senglea parish archives thanks to Fr Robin Camilleri, archpriest of the Senglea parish church dedicated to Our Lady of Victories. In volume 2 of Memorie diverse, a diary note dated July 2, 1837, the author wrote that the titular feast of Porto Salvo was not celebrated with the usual pomp because of cholera and he had to do the sermon of the feast Mass (panegerico) because Fr Ludovico Mifsud, who was supposed to deliver the sermon, left with his family to Livorno to escape the peril (cholera).

This links Fr Baldacchino directly to authorship of the Memorie diverse because in the books of sermons that are undoubtedly his, he mentions this particular sermon dated July 2, 1837. He would have had a very short time to prepare for the panegyric, therefore, he picked a sermon he had given in similar conditions 24 years earlier during the 1813 plaque epidemic and delivered it again.

This new information leaves no doubt that Fr Baldacchino is the author of the Memorie diverse found at the Senglea parish church. What was once believed to be is now a certainty.