Malta Cheers Travel-Weary Pope

Winding down from an odyssey of fence-mending with Muslims and Orthodox Christians, Pope John Paul II basked in the adoration of his own flock Wednesday at a Mass for about 200,000 Roman Catholics, more than half this island nation’s population.

“Mamma mia, my favorite pope!” exclaimed 104-year-old Ines Borg, crossing herself and joining the tumultuous applause as John Paul blessed the crowd from a raised wooden altar by the Mediterranean shore.

It was a festive finale for the pontiff’s turn-of-millennium travels to biblical lands. He visited Egypt and the Holy Land last year, and set out last week to trace the footsteps of the apostle Paul, who converted to Christianity in Syria and preached in ancient Greece before his arrest by the Romans.

Malta, then under Roman rule, is where Paul was shipwrecked in AD 60. He spent six months preaching on the island before he was finally delivered to Rome for trial and beheading. Paul’s converts eventually made this island a stronghold of Catholicism, and it has remained so ever since--except for two centuries of Muslim rule that ended in 1090.

Greeting the pope Tuesday, President Guido De Marco recalled the islanders’ hospitality to the apostle and said, “So do we today welcome you on this last lap of your journey.”

John Paul, who will be 81 on May 18, arrived in Malta appearing exhausted. De Marco braced him as they walked on the airport tarmac in a stiff wind. The pope’s hands trembled and his voice slurred, symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, and he skipped parts of two prepared speeches to get through them more quickly.

His previous days had been a grind of interfaith diplomacy amid anti-papal protests in Greece and the vitriol of the Arab-Israeli conflict. In Athens on Friday, he asked forgiveness for the sins of Catholics against Orthodox Christians; two days later, in Damascus, the Syrian capital, he became the first pope to enter a mosque.

“It has not been an easy trip for John Paul, old now and frail even if blessed with a spirit that enchants a watching world,” the Times of Malta said in an editorial Wednesday, “but today, the Holy Father is on home ground. He is home.”

Cheering admirers who jammed the routes he traveled and converged here for Wednesday’s Mass greeted the pope like family. Their affection seemed to relax and revive the Polish pontiff. At his final appearance, he patted the head of an 87-year-old woman in a wheelchair as they had a lively chat.

“The more his body seems to be crushed, the more he reminds me of the suffering of Christ on the cross,” said Igrid Parlato Trigona, 53, who was struck by the pope’s decline since 1990, when he last visited the island. “His weakest moment physically is his most powerful in spirit.”

Malta, a sun-splashed island of palm trees, yachts and yellow limestone buildings, is one of the most devoutly Catholic countries in the world and the only one in Europe that outlaws divorce and abortion. It is perhaps most famous for the Knights of Malta, also known as the Order of St. John, which ruled the island for centuries and protected its Christian identity by beating back a 16th-century siege by Muslim Ottoman forces.

Today, about 98% of Malta’s 392,000 people are baptized in the church, and their children attend state-supported Catholic schools.

Despite its ancient and enduring Catholic roots, the island has no saints. But John Paul beatified three Maltese--two priests and a nun--at Wednesday’s Mass, bringing them within one step of sainthood.

The most popular of these, Father George Preca, an ascetic who died in 1962, founded the Society of Christian Doctrine, an organization of men and women who pledge themselves to celibacy, private prayer and teaching catechism to children. It operates schools in Malta and six other countries.

Mindful of his interfaith mission in Greece and Syria, the pope’s homily at Mass held up Preca’s writings on Christian tolerance as an exemplary “message of mutual respect and forgiveness especially needed today in Malta and the world.”

Later he challenged about 800 members of Preca’s society, whose male and female members sat apart during their papal audience, to “provide sweet nourishment for all who hunger for God” and shore up Catholic morality as Malta considers joining the European Union.

The Maltese are divided on the issue of EU membership. The government, aiming to join as early as 2003, is bringing laws into line with European regulations. Traditionalists worry that the country, a British colony until 1964, will lose its economic autonomy, cultural identity and morality.

“Abortion, drugs, divorce--all these foreign influences will affect our family-oriented mentality if we join Europe,” said Mario Bezzina, a 20-year-old activist in the religious society.

“I’m not against joining, but we have to be on guard. Temptation is not always presented to us as bad. The devil can enter in subtle ways,” he said.