TMID Editorial: Would we welcome St. Paul Today? – Malta independent online

Archbishop Charles Scicluna on Monday focused on the hope of Homilia, which he presented on the occasion of St. Paul’s Feast.

The Maltese people, he said, are a people of good heart. They welcomed St. Paul and the passengers of the ship he was on, showing what humanity means.

St. Paul was on a ship on his way to Rome, but the ship he was on was shipwreck in a storm, and he and others ended up in Malta, where they found residents ready to help. Malta to become a Catholic side is accredited until St. Paul’s short stay.

“I ask this question to today Malta, to each of us,” the archbishop said. “What will we do? We who met the Lord because Paul introduced us to him? What will we do with our lives, to our culture, our country?”

There is another question that comes to mind, given the circumstances of St. Paul’s visit. Would we welcome St. Paul as a nation and gave him shelter the way our ancestors made, if he had to arrive today?

The archbishop in his own way gave us an answer. “Let us not lose the original decency of the first residents of this island,” he told the Council last Monday.

It is probably that many of us have already lost the “original adaptation” that the Archbishop refers to his Homilia. When migrants have been close to our shores for several years, many times in trouble after passing from North Africa, hoping for a better future, our reaction was indifferent at the best of our best. Even the country’s authorities sometimes did not respond well or reacted late.

Tragedies occurred. Many migrants have died and continue to die as they use unclear boats in their hope of reaching what will be the promised land and a new beginning. And the truth is that many of us are not really interested.

And not only to migrants who arrive by boat, that we often show a lack of respect and offer a little dignity. We are not always ready to accept people with different culture and different religion among us.

We have seen this happen in the last 10 years or more, during which the population of the country has increased dramatically as a result of the fact that thousands of foreigners have been diverted to serve our economy. We are hardly aware of it, but without them, Malta’s economy will collapse. Yet we – very Maltese and Gositani – do not treat them kindly and see them as an additional weight for our infrastructure and trouble of traffic.

It is true that it works in both directions – the people who come to live in Malta must do their best to integrate into the new society in which they live. But it is also true that many Maltese and Gositans do not make them easier for them. S

Religious issues aside is likely that Malta is not so friendly to St. Paul as our ancestors were two millennia ago. And that’s a pity.