I was talking about tax and inheritance tax. ‘Donate’ in lieu of money owed to the state.

[Daphne – If you give your property to the state instead of inheritance tax owed, it’s not a donation but a payment.]

Then why all this fuss? Those who can’t afford to manage their estate should donate some of it to the state. End of story.

[Daphne – We no longer have punitive inheritance tax, Joe. Why should they donate anything to the state when they can sell it? That property is theft is a Marxist dictum.]

Another problem is that some properties can have specific lease contracts of casa-bottega, selling specific merchandise in the bottega and the casa is left uninhabited.

Ferreira?

Exactly, it was the new town, neo-gothic the thing to have.

I mean, by her reasoning the one next to Mdina Cathedral should be torn down, St.Paul’s should lose it’s spire and Evans prettified.

I cannot understand how they even expect to be considered versed in aesthetics when all they want is more of the same.

E che du’coglioni. Literally.

That’s not all.

Mintoff (yes, him again) back in the late 1970s, had come up with a cunning plan for the government to take over St John’s Cathedral.

But as storicus says, there were legal complexities. So he engaged a (foreign) expert to track down all the documents which would bolster his case. The whole thing came to nothing when antipathy for the hated barrani and a certain little incident in the Aouzou Strip made the situation too hot for foreigners in Malta.

Exactly. In governmental intervention is solicited, then stately homes, palazzos etc will obviously have to be passed on to the state. Else the owners would need to come up with some kind of business plan or ask a charity. There should also be laws were people can pass on property to the state in lieu of inheritance taxes, taxes, etc.

[Daphne – That last has been happening for yonks. It’s how the state got Palazzo Francia opposite parliament house.]

Poetic justice.

According to the authoritative and may I add Labour leaning historian “Il-kavallier Guze’ Galea” La Cassier left in his will that if the knights were to leave the island Saint John’s will automatically become Church property.

I vividly recall him stating this on his radio program on Xandir Malta, when the minister for culture Alex Sceberras Trigona tried to lay his hands on this gem.After Galea’s statement AST said that Saint John’s belongs to the Maltese.

During the British period a governor was taken to court by the archbishop because government employees were sent to remove a marble slab from the cathedral.

In the 50s Mintoff organised the restoration of Caravaggio’s “The beheading of Saint John”. When it was returned from Italy, Mintoff placed it in some public museum, Archbishop Gonzi fought back and had it back in it’s rightful place , the oratory.

The ownership of St John’s co-Cathedral is far more complex and unsure than that.

St John was the personal property of Grand Master La Cassiere, who had bought the land in his own name and over it built the church out of his own pocket.

In his will, La Cassiere left the church to the Order of St John, on the express condition that should the Order not make use of it for any reason, St John would devolve on the Maltese Church (the Bishop).

When Napoleon captured Malta, the property of the Order passed to the new French government – but did St John fall under this category, in view of the express condition in La Cassiere’s will?

To complicate matters ever further, Napoleon signed a piece of paper by which (after stripping the church of most of its treasures) he “bequeathed” the church to the Bishop of Malta.

The British government and the church agreed to disagree on the ownership of St John. They both claimed it belonged to them and neither of them ever dared to test their claims in court. They reached a tacit modus vivendi to cooperate “without prejudice”.

That accounts for the joint Church and Government Foundation to administer St John. The two entities still claim exclusive ownership, but work hand in hand, independently of the intractable legal complexities underlying the ownership issue.

[Daphne – Gosh, thanks. A fantastic explanation.]