opinion

Malta has three beati after one long weekend in the sun

THE Pope’s visit was a great success, although there is still some bad feeling for the government from those who did not get a holiday. It was estimated that 200,000 people turned up to see the Pope, around 100,000 of these were at the Granaries. Disgusting coverage on the Maltese TV, with the commentator thinking we are all morons and going on and on about Christian-Orthodox dialogue (never mind the fact that the Orthodox are Christian too). When the chatterbox has had enough filling us up with trivialities, he switched on to translating the Pope's English in a way that if you understand English, you still have to listen to the translation. At one point, Charles Arrigo got so much into things that he even started to translate into Maltese the Maltese anthem ‘Viva l-Papa’. No wonder all the people I know switched over to Italian TV.

There was also some ill-feeling that Blessed Gorg Preca was given more coverage than Blesseds Ignatius Falzon and Adeodata Pisani. Preca's portrait was even placed in the middle of the other two. You know a thing or two about order of precedence so you need no explanations. But then, is there much to say about a 19th century Benedictine nun? Or a 19th century cleric, who worked with British sailors (now what the hell are those?)

Results of the whole thing in a nutshell:

Malta now has three blesseds each with their own partit and with other partiti complaining that there could have been more beatifications, the Pope got a great suntan from standing in the Popemobile in the sun and now having been Christian since St Paul (although I am descended from renegade Jews) we are supposed to go into Europe and re-evangelise. Hopefully before it all goes Islamic.

And here allow me some theory. It goes something like this: "When the saints go marching in, the devil goes marching out". In the Sunday Circle, a contributor decided to write about satanism. And who does she interview? No less than Fr Marcello ‘there's no biz like show biz’ Ghirlando. Go ahead and yawn. What's new is that he says he watched ‘The Exorcist’. Uhh, he’s so 1970s. But he says he watched it because he keeps getting questions about it in secondary school classes from students who might have been thinking to sell themselves to the Devil to get rid of their acne. They should watch Polanski’s ‘Rosemary’s baby’ and they might decide never to have children.

Poor showing for the contributor who had to resort to ‘rumours of necrophilia and ritual sacrifices’ to kindle some interest. All the more reason to choose cremation. And people are more interested in miracles these days and weeping Madonnas. So sorry mate, the devil is definitely out.

Now with the Pope gone, all interest was on the Eurovision for some weeks. As usual, our commentators had a field day with mind-numbing analysis of songs you wouldn't sing when you're drunk. And OF COURSE they made sure to translate ‘Malta: ten points’ into ‘Malta: ghaxar punti’ just in case there is some rustic, living on Dingli Cliffs who has a TV but does not know the meaning of ‘ten’.

We received communiques about how participation in the Eurovision is supposed to bolster our tourism industry. Picture this: an aging Calvinist couple in the prairies of Drenthe, in the Netherlands, sitting on that Saturday night in front of their TV (don't worry: they'll switch it off at midnight as then it would be Sunday, technically). Malta wins Eurovision. And presumably they will be so enthralled that they will put their Bible-bashing aside, take the first train to A'dam the following Monday, ignore all the dirt cheap holidays to the Islas Canarias, Ibiza, Tenerife, Bali and Mexico and come to Malta. Why? Because the beach in the music video looked so nice.

Give me a break!