Spunt Malta

Aidan’s “Bella” is a jazz-leaning, retro-styled, multilingual ballad. It is not radical, but it is clearly positioned. It sits outside the dominant contemporary dance-pop lane that usually fills national finals.

On 22 January 1984 , Archbishop Mikiel Gonzi died at the age of 99, closing a chapter that had shaped Malta’s political, religious and social life for much of the twentieth century. Few individuals exercised comparable influence over the islands during a period marked by war, decolonisation, ideological conflict and rapid social change. His episcopate, which lasted from 1944 to 1976, coincided almost exactly with Malta’s transition from a British fortress colony into an independent republic....

On 21 January 1956, Malta’s path toward political integration with the United Kingdom entered one of its most divisive moments. On that day, Archbishop Michael Gonzi and the Bishop of Gozo, Giuseppe Pace, issued a joint Pastoral Letter warning of the risks that integration posed to the Catholic Church’s position in Maltese society. At stake was not only Malta’s constitutional future, but the question of who would hold authority over the island’s social order. The integration proposal,...