Pope Francis makes his long post-postponed visit to Malta this weekend, April 2-3, as the Russian attack on Ukraine rages on. He has long desired to visit this Mediterranean island where, according to the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul was shipwrecked in 60 A.D. while en route to Rome, where he had asked to be judged. Francis wished to come here to meet and pray with one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, which has kept the faith for almost 2,000 years without interruption. He had planned to visit in February 2020 and again in December 2021 but had to postpone the visit both times because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This will be his 36th foreign journey as pope, and Malta will be the 56th country he has visited. He is the third pope to visit Malta; Pope John Paul II came here twice, in 1990 and 2001.
Francis has long desired to visit Malta where, according to the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul was shipwrecked in 60 A.D. while en route to Rome, where he had asked to be judged.
Benedict XVI’s visit in 2010 took place on the eve of a decade of political, cultural and social change for Malta. The Maltese church and the Vatican were acutely aware of this at the time, and Benedict encouraged the islanders to respect human life from conception to natural death and to protect the family. After his visit, however, divorce legislation was introduced in 2011. Then in 2014, Malta allowed civil unions for same-sex couples, granting them the same rights and obligations as married couples, including the right to adoption. Same-sex marriage became legal in 2017.
Maltese society today is very much in favor of the protection of the unborn, but a lobby is slowly forming with funding from abroad to promote the legalization of abortion. The main political parties have stated that abortion legalization is not on their agenda, but there is pressure from the European Union and the Council of Europe to pass such legislation. Francis is likely to encourage them to remain steadfast on this matter.
In 2017, there were allegations of corruption among government officials in the wake of the Panama Papers leaks, and on Oct. 16, 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist and blogger who had been an outspoken critic of the government, was assassinated after a car bomb was detonated as she drove away from her home. Yorgen Fenech, a prominent businessman with links to the prime minister’s chief of staff was charged with commissioning the murder, and the trial is ongoing. Amid the fallout from this incident, Malta’s government came under huge pressure from the E.U. and the international community to carry out institutional reforms and deal with corruption issues. Francis is expected to touch on this in his talk to the authorities soon after his arrival.
Maltese society today is very much in favor of the protection of the unborn, but a lobby is slowly forming with funding from abroad to promote the legalization of abortion.
The archipelago of Malta consists of three islands—Malta, Gozo and Comino—and it has a population of 478,000 people, the majority of whom (85 percent) are Catholic. They are served by 716 priests, 797 consecrated women and 1,249 catechists.
Like in other countries, Covid has impacted Maltese society, including its traditionally ingrained cycles of ritual and worship, but public religious practice was already on the decline. A 2017 Mass attendance survey (only for Malta; Gozo refused to take part) showed regular Sunday Mass attendance was down to 37 percent, but in a parallel phone survey, 70 percent of respondents said they went to Sunday Mass once a month.
Pope Francis will arrive at Malta’s international airport at 10 a.m. on Saturday, where he will be given a state welcome by the Maltese President George Vella and his wife. From there he will drive to the Palace of the Grand Master in the city of La Valetta. There, after a private conversation with the president, the pope will greet the prime minister, Robert Abela, who was reelected in the national elections last weekend.
The archipelago of Malta consists of three islands—Malta, Gozo and Comino—and it has a population of 478,000 people, the majority of whom (85 percent) are Catholic.
Francis will then be escorted by President Vella to the Grand Council Chamber, where he will address an audience of some 150 people from the country’s political and civic authorities and its diplomatic corps. His speech will be closely scrutinized not only for what he may have to say regarding some of the challenges facing the island state—including such issues as the environment, corruption and economic transparency—but especially for what he will say about the Russian war against Ukraine and its global consequences.
From there, Francis will drive to the Vatican embassy, known as the nunciature, where he will reside during his stay.
Later, on Saturday afternoon, he will travel by catamaran to the island of Gozo, which has a population of 30,000. Pope Francis will be accompanied by the island’s former bishop, Cardinal Mario Grech, and by the cardinal’s successor, Bishop Anton Teuma, as well as Charles Scicluna, who has been archbishop of Malta since 2015. (The pope appointed Cardinal Grech to be secretary general of the Synod of Bishops in 2019, and the cardinal is traveling on the papal plane.)
Francis will lead a prayer service at the national shrine of Ta’ Pinu, home to a chapel that became a pilgrimage site of popular devotion in the 15th century. A painting of the Assumption of the Virgin was placed in the chapel at a later date but then the chapel was closed for two centuries and fell into disrepair. In 1883 it was reopened following a prodigious event associated with a peasant woman, Carmela Grima, who heard a voice telling her to recite three Ave Marias there, “one for each day I was in the tomb.” She told a friend, Francesco Portelli, who confided that he, too, had heard that same voice. Not long after, both experienced miraculous cures, and the news spread. The shrine soon became a place of pilgrimage and remains so today; John Paul II came and prayed there in 1990. Francis will pray and give a homily before returning to the nunciature.
Francis will lead a prayer service at the national shrine of Ta’ Pinu, home to a chapel that became a pilgrimage site of popular devotion in the 15th century.
On Sunday morning, Francis will have a brief meeting at the nunciature with Malta’s Jesuit community before going to the Grotto of St. Paul in the city of Rabat, where, according to tradition, St. Paul stayed three months on the island after his shipwreck; during this time, the Acts of the Apostles tell us that he preached the Gospel, baptized people and cured the sick.
St. John Paul II prayed here in 1990, and Benedict XVI did likewise in 2010, on the 1,950th anniversary of the shipwreck of the apostle. Francis will pray and light a votive lamp in the small grotto before going to the Graneries, a square in the fortified town of Floriana (just outside the capital city Valetta), where he will concelebrate an open-air Mass for some 20,000 people.
That afternoon, after greeting the conference of major religious superiors, Pope Francis will visit the John XXIII Peace Lab Migrant Center at Hal Far, one of the main industrial estates of Malta. There he will focus on the question of migration and encourage the Maltese to continue with their 2,000-year tradition of “extraordinary hospitality” to migrants.
The motto for his visit to Malta is a quote from the Acts of the Apostles—“They showed us extraordinary hospitality” (28:2)—a reference to how the islanders welcomed St. Paul, his guards and fellow travelers when they arrived on the island. The logo of the visit shows hands from a ship hit by waves reaching out to a cross , which is meant to symbolize the Christian welcome to the neighbor and assistance to those who are in difficulty.
The motto for his visit to Malta is a quote from the Acts of the Apostles—“They showed us extraordinary hospitality”—a reference to how the islanders welcomed St. Paul.
Both the motto and logo are particularly significant since Malta, because of its closeness to north Africa, has been the preferred destination for many migrants fleeing war or poverty from Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia and other lands. Their plight is just a small part of a surge in global migration that has been transformed into the greatest humanitarian crisis of the 21st century. Addressing the plight of migrants has been a priority for Francis since his election as pope in March 2013.
The question of migration has long been a controversial topic in Malta. A significant number of Maltese have been opposed to accepting more migrants who have crossed from Libya. The government favored a push-back policy of returning migrants to Libya while at the same time calling on the European Union to introduce a burden-sharing mechanism. (Such a program has still not been implemented.) There have also been tensions between Malta and Italy over who should take responsibility for migrants stranded at sea. Many have drowned trying to make the crossing on rickety boats from North Africa organized by human smugglers. However, the Maltese have been very open to the idea of receiving refugees from Ukraine, and many citizens have offered rooms in their homes.
Before leaving the John XXIII Peace Lab, Francis will greet some 200 migrants from many countries. Finally, on Sunday evening, he will be driven to the airport to board the Air Malta plane that will take him back to Rome.
He is expected to hold a press conference on the roughly 90-minute-long flight back to Rome. During this, it is rumored that he could announce that he has accepted the president of Poland’s invitation to visit the country. The president invited Francis on April 1 to meet many of the two million refugees from Ukraine that the homeland of St. John Paul II has given refuge to, and to greet and thank the Polish people for their extraordinary hospitality in this moment of grave crisis in Europe.
