Malta is quite a place and I recommend it highly. The secularists just managed to get divorce approved here last year...it’s very Catholic, but unfortunately this is changing.
I met a wonderful devoted priest at the St Paul Shipwreck Church today (that’s really it’s name - a gorgeous church, with two important relics of St Paul). He was out on the street dragging people in to see his church.
He said he had been in the US once, to go to Alabama and be on EWTN! I assume this was for the Pauline year, although I don’t recall which year that was.
In any case, I’ve seen all sorts of Holy Week exhibits, because they have a tradition of doing miniature diorama-sized scenes of the Passion and of episodes from the Gospels.
On Holy Thursday I will visit the 7 churches, where they are already setting up the enormous floral Altar of Repose, and then see the processions.
But what really made my visit was meeting this humble and holy priest today. And I think Pope Francis is a lot like him.
Oh, sigh ...
I would love to spend Holy Week somewhere that the observances are not an afterthought in the midst of an ordinary work/school week. Maybe I’ll get to visit my FRiend in Colombia some day ... he claims to have been in jail in Malta, and then deported with extreme prejudice ;-).