Frenc tal-Gharb : the farmer-healer from Gozo

Abstract

The azure waters of the Mediterranean are dotted with thousands of islands most of which are unknown to the outside world. One of the most small, though not the smallest, is Gozo, the northern-most island of the Maltese archipelago. This island is the tiny world of a few thousand people and it is this world that forms the backdrop of this story about a man born there one hundred years ago this year, a man like many others and yet so different. On December 3rd 1892, in their twenty-first year of marriage, Salvu Mercieca and Benedetta, also surnamed Mercieca, begot their eighth child. That same day he was taken to the village church of Gharb, where they lived, and christened Francis Xavier, John Mary and Pius. Through all his life he was known simply as Frenc. He was so called after the saint of the day, Saint Francis Xavier, a pioneer missionary in India and Japan. (Frenc - pronounced "French"). [excerpt]