Thanks for the article. I wasn’t aware that this took place! Jenny was a very close friend of mine for many years and till today I am trying to come to terms that she is not around anymore. We miss her sadly. Cant believe the cruelty of journalists and yes, it would have shocked me if photos would have been published! Unbelievable!

At one extreme is the idea that the public gas a right to be told all the details of an incident (including the minutiae of a victim’s life). Anything less is regarded as pussyfooting around. If that means bothering the newly bereaved goes the argument, then so be it. The most insensitive case I know of involved Los Angeles Examiner city editor, Jim Richardson. According to the biography of sportswriter Jim Murray. Richardson once ordered reporter Wayne Sutton to call the mother of a murder victim:

‘Don’t tell her what happened,” he instructed, ‘tell her that her daughter has just won a competition at Camp Roberts. Then get all the information on her.’ Sutton did as instructed, and the mother happily confided her daughter’s life story. Then Sutton put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Now, what do I do?’ he wondered. Richardson looked at him wickedly. ‘Now tell her,’ he purred.

This kind of account is easily matched, I think, by Super One’s vile act of intrusion, which cannot even claim the fig-leaf of providing any kind of journalistic value. Indeed, what seems particularly offensive about this incident, is not so much the initial indiscretion, but the after-the-fact attempt to smear the family by showing and editorially condemning their emotional and justifiably angered reaction.
If this does not qualify for a rebuke, or even punitive action, from broadcasting authorities, then what should?

I understand that a local Curia enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, and also that the Vatican was not overjoyed with Gonzi’s goings on with Mintoff. I also understand that it was Vatican pressure that eventually forced Gonzi to rescind his draconian measures – without the Mintoff camp ever having to retract anything or go to Canossa.

The Addolorata cemetery is a public cemetery administered by the Ministry of Health. It is not owned or administered by the CATHOLICS. The Ministry states that everyone is eligible to be buried there. Indeed, many non-Catholics are buried there every year. The unfortunates of the “mizbla” have now been incorporated within the grounds of the cemetery. The mizbla episode is one the most reprehensible and shameful acts perpetrated by the local Catholic church.

You may recall it was all about mortal sin and interdiction for reading a newspaper of a particular political party, or for voting for that party, or for being a member of some committee of that party. Abominable. Meddoc proposes “a very simple concept”, but it was not as simple as that. It was not a question of “some people decided not to remain members of the Catholic Church” but a question of these people being given the boot against their wishes by said compassionate Church. It was a question of gross and unjustifiable interference by Bishop Gonzi in matters of State. It had nothing to do with religious dogma or with the rules of the Vatican club. It was a local concoction. The reverberations of those iniquitous times are still felt to this day. I remember being asked in the confessional as a young teenager (with no vote – maybe it was my newly-broken deep voice) who I was going to vote for. Tal misthija.

Meddoc says “some people tend to forget”. Well, Meddoc, some people haven’t forgotten, and neither are some people impressed at your attempt to defend the indefensible.

[Daphne – This business of the relative authority of the local Curia and the Vatican foxes me. When the local Curia acts, doesn’t it act opn behalf of the Vatican? And I wonder, too, at the fixation that both the local Curia and the Vatican (are they one?) develop with individual cases, almost like a personal vendetta. Booting people out of the Catholic Church is still used as a threat. As I recall, it was used some days ago as a warning against Italian MPs when the introduction of the abortion pill on the Italian market came up for the vote. And wasn’t it used against the current US ambassador to Malta? I suppose this is a legitimate act by a club against its members: don’t follow the rules and we’ll throw you out. But then again, it undermines completely the essential message of Christianity, which is charity, love for one’s fellow man, and forgiveness. This undermining of the Christian message was nowhere clearer than in the denial of a funeral mass to Piergiorgio Welby in Italy a couple of years ago.]

That wasn’t the only gaffe of its kind. They’ve also been known to raise false hopes. Why let facts get in the way of a good scoop, never mind if it turns out to be a damp squib at best?

Since you decided to bring up the death of the death of the five Qrendi youths just for political propoganda I would like to inform you that Claudette Baldacchino was in the forefront of the foundation ‘Hames Blanzuni’ and worked towards the memorial for these youths in Qrendi.
Furthermore if anyone insulted these families it was not Super One but Xarabank. When Peppi Azzopardi invited these parents to take part in Xarabank and used their children’s tragic death to promote ‘Il-Gwardjani Locali’. This programme ended up a ‘xalata hamallata’ as usual and the said parents had to sit it out seeing their tragedy turned into a comedy.

Twanny

That’s one of those Labour urban legends. How do you think forensics got a good look of the wound made by the bullet’s entry on his chin? And would you have expected the corpse to be carried around face downwards?

[Daphne – Thank you for that, Fausto. Had I said it myself, I would have been accused of ‘spinning’ (oh, how that love that outdated word). Those who remark on the body having been turned to face upwards don’t understand the merest basics of human psychology. A freshly killed person is still ‘alive’ in our minds and our first instinct when we see somebody killed before us is to turn that person over so that we can ‘speak’ to his face, and so that his face isn’t pressed into the ground. Some people totally lack imagination and the ability to empathise. So I ask them: what would they do if their friend or their brother were shot and killed in front of them? They would rush to the body and flip it over so that they can touch the face, almost certainly while shouting his name. You don’t ‘speak’ to the back of a person’s head.]

No, he stabbed them in the front.

Being a member of a religious community is a voluntary decision but once taken one has either to obey its rules or get out – very similar to a club.

So if some people decided not to remain members of the Catholic Church (as was their right), then it would have been an insult to them to bury them on Catholic consecrated grounds.

I think that this is a very simple concept but some people tend to forget it and put up the sensational word “mizbla” as if these were buried at the Maghtab landfill in a bid to impress others.

[Daphne – Yes, you’re quite right. People forget that the Addolorata is a CATHOLIC cemetery and not the Maltese national cemetery. The cemeteries in villages are also Catholic. If you are not a Catholic, you have a problem, unless you can obtain permission to be buried in an Anglican or Orthodox cemetery. You won’t get permission for interment at the Muslim and Jewish cemeteries. This burial business is pretty much like the situation with marriage prior to introduction of civil marriage, when you had no choice but to marry by the Catholic or Anglican rite.]