Perhaps it was typical of the man – he did not leave when the odds were stacked against him. Instead he astonished death, allowed his family, friends, admirers and opponents a sigh of relief and then was himself surprised by death.
It was vintage Guido de Marco, and along with his family, we, who had followed his pre-final encounter and hoped he would pull through, were granted that hope only to learn with a sense of shock greater than the initial news of his collapse in hospital, that the man who signed himself out of there with characteristic optimism had, within 48 hours, passed away.
Today, as President Emeritus, he lies in state at the Presidential Palace; no doubt he is watching with expressions of delight, if, that is, he could be bothered, the sight of so many who are paying their last and well-deserved respects.
Guido de Marco was a larger-than-life politician, a showman, in the nicest definition of that word, par excellence. But where most showmen have little to show for themselves, Guido was the stuff of courage throughout a political career that washed him up against some cruel currents.
He faced those currents with a courage and determination that, by 1987, had become legendary. Adversity provided him with the adrenaline that excited him into ever greater efforts to oppose anything and anyone he deemed dangerous to the democratic tenor of these islands.
Those who lived through the 1970s and the early 80s were witness to his personal bravery – and those who have been following the politics of the last four decades are equally aware that he was driven by the vision of an independent and democratic Malta and its place in what was to develop, through various political and economic implants, into the EU.
The photograph of him handing Malta’s application to join the European Economic Community as it then was, in 1990, speaks for itself.
It was when he landed the foreign affairs portfolio that Guido really came into his own. For a man from a small island it was given to him to rub shoulders with many who mattered; this he enjoyed above all things, not least because within this milieu he could project an image of Malta in excess of its size; and he brought to his encounters with foreign dignitaries a cultural and intellectual depth that attracted their respect. Not for him the bombshell when a rapier-like thrust could achieve the same effect.
The hurly-burly of politics never diminished his propensity for charm and a remarkable ability to engage in dialogue with his opponents when this was necessary.
One day he could be arguing his political guts out in Parliament, or at public meetings, the next he would have a ready smile and a proffered hand for those with whom he disagreed intensely. But his gift of charm was wrapped in steel.
All this has been visited by friend and foe alike since his death by surprise last Thursday; perhaps it is left to comment on his Malteseness. He promoted the island’s culture, history and heritage with enthusiasm in his native language, in English and in Italian. He was helped by a gift of the gab, where the gab included substance, humour, understanding and was accompanied by a skill to enthuse his listeners.
To his wife, daughters and his son Mario, who is following in his father’s footsteps and many of whose traits he has obviously inherited, go a nation’s condolences.
The public square
It needs to be established, although there should be no need for this, that the public square – from which many would like to see the Church removed – belongs to everybody; not least in a country where a number of secularist ideologues give the impression that they do not quite understand what the separation of Church and State really means; or worse, they understand it to be something that it is not.
Last year a group of religious leaders in the US, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox and Evangelicals, issued a manifesto they called the ‘Manhattan Declaration’ in defence of the sanctity of life, the definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, and religious freedom, among other issues.
Some tried to criticise the declaration as a violation of the separation of Church and State because it amounted to telling the government what to do.
This charge was rebutted by the intelligent assertion that, “in the United States, citizens tell government what to do all the time. It’s called democracy.”
One archbishop remarked that, “right here, right now, in this country, the work of organising and struggling in the public square for what we believe belongs to us. That means all of us, and each of us.”
The idea that is sometimes put around that religion is a private matter is false because, for one thing, religion has a self-evident public character that has been displayed down the ages; useless to be in favour of charity if you do not act charitably in the public square; useless to believe in the sanctity of marriage if you keep this to yourself and allow the public square to the enemies of the sanctity of marriage; useless to believe in life from conception to death and keep this belief within the precincts of a church and outside the public square; useless to believe in the dignity of the disabled if you do not confront, in the public square, those who think the only dignity left to the disabled is to be knocked off; useless to live in a democratic society when unjust laws are passed and you do not oppose their passage as a matter of faith and reason, in the public square.
Any attempt to deny the Church her rightful space in the public square is to condone her banishment from it by totalitarian regimes and dictatorships that have, from time to time, imposed on her.
From her beginnings, in a Roman outpost to start with and after that throughout the Roman empire, she has used the public square – and there gave witness. Her founder was forever in that square when he was not praying or eating or sleeping, a square his enemies wished to deny him.
His apostles did nothing but preach in the public square. There probably was not a square St Paul did not make use of as he wandered from place to place, from Jerusalem to Rome.
He assumed, naturally and correctly, that the public square was for him as much as it was for all those who lived around it and did not share their beliefs. True, he and his fellow apostles were martyred for so doing, but this was a reflection on the mindset of their executioners; and witnesses down the centuries have met the same fate, continue to do so.
A woman of life
Last December I wrote about Linda Gibbons, a Canadian pro-lifer who has been arrested somewhere in the region of 20 times and has spent eight of the last 16 years behind bars. She was a grandmother then, is a 62-year-old great-grandmother today.
Recently, according to the Canadian National Post, a copy of which was passed on by a friend of mine, she decided to refuse bail and to spend 550 days in prison rather than opt for freedom. According to the Post, she is ‘One of Canada’s longest-serving anti-abortion protesters’.
Her crime was to disobey an injunction forbidding protesters to enter a ‘bubble-zone’ outside an abortion clinic; and the reason why she refuses a $500 bail is that she wants this injunction quashed before she accepts it. Gibbons is, clearly, a formidable woman; she regards herself as a prisoner of conscience, which she is.
Her opponents do not agree; Celia Posyniak, an abortion clinic director, thinks that what Gibbons does is “creepy. It’s intimidating just to have someone standing there.”
Not, one would have thought, nearly as intimidating as the abortionist scalpel is for the unborn child. The director, poor dear, says that one can’t imagine what it’s like to have “someone standing out there mumbling at them. But I’ll tell you, it’s not a nice feeling.”
Canada is not a nice country when it comes to abortion. Let me rephrase that; it’s a vile country. The Supreme Court there ruled in 1991 “that a child in the process of being born was not a ‘person’ even when the head protruded from the canal”. That child, if it could talk, would have said that what happened next was “not a nice feeling” – with more cause, I venture to suggest, than the sensitive Posyniak.
So, in prison, Gibbons is determined to remain; there she counsels against drug use and life on the street and “glows when she says that she has saved three babies from abortion while on the inside”; a witness to life.
Prison is her public square. Should you wish to contact this now fragile and awesome woman, write to: Attention: Linda Gibbons, Vanier Centre for Women, 655, Martin Street, Box 1040, Milton, Ontario, L9T 5E6, Canada.
No stickers (address, return address or pro-life) on envelope or card or either of these may not get to her; no pro-life pamphlets, prayer cards, bookmarks or laminated cards.
Christian materials are OK but stick to one or two pages; put your address directly in the letter; any money gift or money order must be made out to ‘Linda Gibbons’ – she uses any money, which the detention centre deposits into her account, for envelopes and stamps.