Malta to receive the Pope and a saint!

by our correspondent POPE John Paul II will pay a one-day official visit to Malta next June, government sources have confirmed. This will be the first papal visit to this Mediterranean island which became Catholic nearly 2,000 years ago after the Apostle Paul landed there in dramatic circumstances.
The Pope was handed the government's official invitation oft Friday, February 12, when he received in audience at the Vatican Maltese premier Dr Eddie Fenech Adami and Foreign Affairs Minister Censu Tabone. They later met the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Casaroli.
Last November, during a television interview, Archbishop Guzeppi Mercieca, revealed that he had extended an official invitation to the Pope, adding that His Holiness had reacted by saying that he was certain the Maltese people would welcome such a visit as every time he met Maltese nationals they always asked him when he planned to visit the island.
Islanders are hoping that the Pope's visit programme would include the beatification of the Ven Nazju Falzon, who lived between 1813 and 1865 and whose spiritual life was dedicated mainly to the teaching of catechism and work among British servicemen, many of whom were Protestants or unbaptised.
Last October, the Cardinals and Bishops of the Congregation of Causes of Saints unanimously agreed that this saintly man led a life of virtue in a heroic manner. The Pope ordered that the degree be published and registered in the acts of the Congregation for the Cause of Saints.
Preparations for the visit are already underway and are being worked out jointly between government and Church authorities. Church-State relations, considerably strained during Socialist rule, have improved considerably since Fenech Adami's Nationalist Party was returned to power last May.
Four days after winning the elections, the new government withdrew the appeal entered by the previous government in the Devolution of Church Property case, after the Civil Court had declared the said law unconstitutional.
Discussions were once again opened on the terms of the 1985 Vatican agreement on the future of Church schools and an agreement is expected to be announced shortly.
And last month, Archbishop Mercieca was invited to visit and celebrate Mass at the Civil Prisons — the first such visit by an archbishop since April 1972.
A few weeks ago, when Dr Alexander Cachia Zammit, the new Maltese Ambassador to the Holy See, presented his Letters of Credence to His Holiness, he told the Pope that Malta awaited the day when she would be able to say personally to the Successor of Peter, that she was still proud of the faith of her ancestors and that she would seek to bear witness to Christian culture and civilization in the future as well.
Blue nuns
The former Blue Sisters' hospital in Malta, closed seven years ago following the expulsion of the sisters of the Little Company of Mary by the previous government, is being turned into a geriatric teaching hospital.
Last year the Blue Sisters were requested by the new government to return and to re-open the hospital, but they replied that they were unable to do so.
The Sisters have now relinquished the use of the hospital in favour of the Maltese Government. It will now be used for the care, treatment and management of elderly people suffering from acute medical conditions.
Old order
A report published by the Maltese Religious Orders discloses an ageing in the Orders' membership as well as a reduction of 136 in the number of religious based in Malta over a four-year period.
"This trend is one of concern to the long term role of the Orders, and to the financing of the undertakings they operate, including schools and homes," the report says.
The Maltese Religious Orders now have some 2,100 members residing in Malta as well as some 800 more working abroad, mostly in Third World countries.