Rome (Italy). On 2 and 3 April 2022 Pope Francis will make his 36th apostolic journey to the island of Malta, the 56th country he has visited, accepting the invitation of the President of the Republic, George William Vella, of the civil authorities, and of the Catholic Church. Scheduled for 31 May 2020, it had been postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. After John Paul II (1990 and 2001) and Benedict XVI (2010), Pope Francis is the 3rd Pope to visit this country.
“They treated us with rare humanity”, from the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 28: 2) is the motto of the trip and, as the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni illustrated on 29 March in the press conference, “welcome, hospitality, need for peace” are the themes that characterize it.
The logo of the trip
In the logo, the hands coming from a ship at the mercy of the waves, are a sign of the Christian welcoming his/her neighbor, of assistance to those in difficulty, and are stretched out towards the Cross. The boat recalls the dramatic story of the shipwreck of St. Paul on the island of Malta, which occurred during the voyage to Rome in the winter of the year 60 (Acts 27: 27-44) and the hospitality of the Maltese towards the apostle and the shipwrecked (Acts 28: 1-10).
Malta in fact, the Vatican spokesman specified, “means refuge, safe port, hospitable harbor, and immediately evokes the theme of good welcome, hospitality, the need for the Mediterranean to be a place of welcome where one cannot be rejected.” Malta is therefore “a real laboratory for welcoming diversities”.
The Maltese Church has its origins in the evangelizing work of the apostle Paul. The Holy Father Francis spoke of the experience of welcoming St. Paul in Malta in the catecheses of two General Audiences, on 8 and 22 January 2020, dedicated to the apostle to the Gentiles and, at the end of the General Audience of 30 March 2022, as his departure was imminent, he recalled the current commitment to welcoming refugees:
“In that luminous land I will be a pilgrim in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul, who was welcomed there with great humanity after having been shipwrecked at sea while on his way to Rome. This Apostolic Journey will thus be an opportunity to go to the sources of the proclamation of the Gospel, to get to know personally a Christian community with a thousand-year lively history, to meet the inhabitants of a country located in the center of the Mediterranean and in the south of the European continent, today even more committed to welcoming many brothers and sisters in search of refuge”.
The program
Matteo Bruni illustrated in detail, the intense program of the trip, which will have 5 discourses. The first will be on 2 April, during the encounter with the authorities and the diplomatic corps in the ‘Grand Council Chamber’ of the Palace of the Great Master in La Valletta.
In the afternoon, he will transfer to Gozo, the second largest island of the Maltese archipelago where, in the Sanctuary of “Ta ‘Pinu”, after placing a Golden Rose in front of the Virgin’s painting, he will hold a prayer meeting at the beginning of which he will greet and bless the sick.
On 3 April, he will have a private meeting with the members of the Society of Jesus, then a visit to the grotto of St. Paul at the Basilica of St. Paul in Rabat, the site of the apostle’s shipwreck, where he will pray in private. Inside the Basilica, he will greet 14 religious leaders and, subsequently, the sick and those cared for by Caritas.
At 10:15 am, on the square of the Granaries in Floriana, the Pope will celebrate Holy Mass and at the end of the Celebration will lead the Angelus prayer.
In the afternoon, he will visit the “John XXIII Peace Lab” Migrant Center in Hal Far, run by volunteers, which hosts 50 migrants from Africa across the Mediterranean. Hospitality is combined with educational work in the field of human rights, justice and peace promotion. There he will meet 200 migrants and there will be two testimonies. Together with a family of migrants, he will light some candles in front of the image of Our Lady.
Pope Francis’ visit to Malta, a place of arrival and welcome for many migrants, in this particular time marked by conflicts in Ukraine, is a sign of hope for a Europe that needs peace and an opportunity to reaffirm that different identities can coexist in a peaceful way.
