Ecclesiastical foundations at the service of the elderly in Malta from the 18th to the 20th century

Abstract

The Church in Malta still gives great importance to the elderly today, because she always has at heart the senior citizens who had worked hard and greatly contributed to their families, to society and to the State. Who is the elderly for the Church? For Pope Francis “… the elderly is the present and the future of the Church.” The Church has been telling us about the role of the elderly, especially ‘grandparents’, who have a great deal to contribute to younger generations. In fact, Pope Francis felt the need that the Church should dedicate a special day in honour of all ‘Grandparents and the Elderly,’ to be celebrated on the fourth Sunday in July. The first celebration was held on the 25 July 2021. On that occasion during his homily, the Pope commenting on Jn 6:5, stated that we have to be more conscious of the words ‘gather, preserve with care, protect’ to show that grandparents and the elderly are not remains of life and scraps to be thrown away. “They are precious pieces of bread left on the table of life that can still nourish us with a fragrance that we have lost, ‘the fragrance of mercy and of memory.’” The Pope ended his homily by drawing our attention that our grandparents and the elderly “are bread that nourishes our life.” The following year on 22 July 2022 Pope Francis began his message with line 15 from Psalm 92: “In old age they will still bear fruit.” These words are quite the opposite of the concept of how the modern world thinks about elderly persons. Towards the end of his homily the Pope exhorted: “Dear grandparents, dear elderly persons, we are called to be artisans of the revolution of tenderness to our world!”5 Finally, the Pope entrusted all to Our Lady, Mother of Tender Love, in the hope that with a revolution of tenderness the world would be free from the phantom of loneliness. The Church was always conscious that the elderly are more prone to illness and needed special care when they are advanced in years. The world’s oldest hospitals were founded by the Church. “St. Fabiola was responsible for establishing the first hospital in the Western Roman Empire, built in Rome around 400.” [...]