Pope visits Malta in Mediterranean mission

VATICAN CITY (AFP) – Pope Francis made his first visit to Malta yesterday where he asked the heavily Catholic country to do more to help migrants who have risked their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

The visit to the tiny island nation was scheduled two years ago but has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, and now comes as war in Ukraine unleashes a new humanitarian emergency across Europe, with millions fleeing their homes.

On Friday, Francis tweeted that his “journey in the footsteps of the Apostle Paul” would be an “opportunity to know at first hand a Christian community with a millennia-old history.”

Francis, who visited a migrant center during his two-day trip, renewed calls for an end to the war while reminding the world not to overlook those who continue to risk their lives at sea trying to reach Europe from North Africa.

“The pope comes to our island as a herald and messenger of reconciliation and mercy not only in the Mediterranean basin, but throughout the world,” the Archbishop of Malta Charles Scicluna said in Italy’s Christian Family magazine published on Friday.

The 85-year-old pontiff’s visit to Malta follows those of his predecessors Benedict XVI in 2010 and two visits by John Paul II, in 1990 and 2001.

The country’s history is steeped in Catholicism going back to St. Paul, who is believed to have been shipwrecked on Malta en route to his execution in Rome.

About 85 percent of Malta’s 516,000 inhabitants say they are Catholic believers. Catholicism is part of the constitution and Malta is the only European Union country that completely bans abortion.

The pontiff will conduct mass Sunday before an estimated crowd of 10,000 people in Floriana, next to the capital Valletta, following a visit to the Grotto of St. Paul, where the apostle is believed to have sought shelter.