The incredible feat

Xewkija The Rotunda - A testament to faith, courage and love Author: Ted M Mizzi Publisher: Self-published Year: 2015 Pages: 164

A few years ago I joined a tour of art students being taken around Gozo to appreciate art in the Gozo churches.

We visited Xewkija. I had never heard of what they call the Museum of Sculpture. This is an annex next to the sacristy where they have massed together fragments of the old church’s wonderful sculpture. It is not a church nor does it pretend to be one. What were altars in the old baroque church now stand next to each other. The distances and proportions are obliterated.

Those who were with me and I too concluded it is a sorry display to show what treasure of rococo sculpture and architecture Xewkija lost when they pulled down the old church. It was too cold and damp, they said at the time, and eerie too since the dead were buried inside the church. And the church was too small where people and families reserved the chairs for themselves.

Instead of which they have now the new Rotunda - a replica of Venice’s Basilica della Salute dominating over the small village.

Coming from Hamrun I I knew of Guze D’Amato, the architect who gave us the dome of Hamrun, which is very different from what was planned by architect Galizia who built the church and that of Valletta’s Carmel church which I once heard described as an orgasm by an eminent architect at a public meeting and which has irredeemably altered the Valletta skyline.

I attended school first at Xewkija’s old school. My aunt was a teacher there and every day a seven-seater taxi used to collect her and her colleagues from Rabat and take them, to Xewkija. I was staying with nanna then and I was taken along for some days by my aunt to the Xewkija school.

This small book is a testimony of life lived in the village of Xewkija. The book carries an introduction by Professor Godfrey Baldacchino who tells how he used to spend his holidays in a small house in Xewkija becoming integrated in the village life.

More than that this small book tells of the vision, the indomitable courage, and the resourcefulness that led the entire village to conceive and build such a huge and beautiful church.

By 1922 the need was already being felt to enlarge the church. Permission was granted and the church was enlarged. But it was not enough. Chevalier Vincenzo Bonello, father of Judge Giovanni Bonello, submitted a design but it was not accepted because the plan was for the new church to be built at some distance from the old one.

Enter Archpriest Guzeppi Grech who was determined to build a new and big church around the old church. He sought out Guze D’Amato, an engineer and designer, who had already built the churches of Kalkara and Paola. Born in Sfax, Tunisia, D’Amato was an expert in the use of concrete.

He submitted his plans, based on the Basilica della Salute, though not in all the details – the dome was to be 37.5 metres high and rest on eight reinforced concrete Corinthian columns in a perfect circle. It would hold 3,000 people sitting and a further 4.000 standing.

Archpriest Grech had a blind faith that the village of 700 families would collect enough funds to build this enormous church. He was not to be disappointed.

Work started in 1948 and it was only in May 1970 that the cross was finally fixed to the dome. Even so, there was still much work to be done.

Meanwhile, Guze D’Amato had died, aged 77 years, in May 1963.

Archpriest Grech soldiered on and died 17 months after the fixing of the cross when he was hit by an empty gas cylinder from an out of control gas truck near the Mgarr Harbour.

The author, who was a boy while the church was being built (and almost lost his life when like children do, he eluded supervision and clambered up to the unfinished dome), describes the masons and skilled workers who in reality built the entire church. Mr D’Amato lived in Malta and made only sporadic visits to see the work in progress.

He learnt to trust master masons Guzepp Cauchi and Toni Vella, together with other workers such as Zakkarija and his sons Guzepp and Salvu and other labourers. Being from the same small village, these were not just workers on a project but also fellow villagers.

Surprisingly for a building so high and complex, the construction saw only two deaths, with many miraculous escapes.

After the death of Archpriest Grech, Dun Karm Mercieca who I remember at San Gorg and the Don Bosco Oratory in Victoria, was chosen as archpriest and he infused new vigour in the completion of the church and the dismantling of the old church.