Saint George Preca

He was born in Valletta on February 12, 1880, the seventh child of a middle-class family of nine, according to the Society he founded; his father, Vincenzo, was a merchant and later a sanitary inspector, and his mother, Natalina Ceravolo, was a teacher. ¹⁷ In 1888 the family moved to Hamrun, then a fast-growing town near Valletta, and he received his first Communion and Confirmation in its parish church of Saint Cajetan. ¹

At seventeen, walking in the Maglio Gardens at Floriana, he met one of his teachers from the Lyceum, Fr Ercole Mompalao, who told him, in the Holy See biography's words, "Preca, when you grow up, people who revere God will befriend you and you them. You will find your good fortune through them and they through you". ¹ John Paul II, preaching not far from the spot in 2001, gave it as "Gorg, when you grow up many who fear God will gather around you. You will be a blessing for them and they for you". ³ The Society's own site has a third version, and adds that his father and his doctor would have thought the prophecy false, because he was a sickly youth. ⁷

As a seminarian he used to go down to the Grand Harbour, board the foreign ships, and offer the Greek, English and French sailors a cigarette, steering the conversation round to spiritual matters once he had them laughing. ⁷ He did the same with a group of young men who met near the parish church in Hamrun. ⁷ A few months before his ordination he nearly died; the Holy See says he survived through the intercession of Saint Joseph, but his left lung was permanently impaired. ¹ He was ordained on December 22, 1906. ¹

His confessor, Fr Aloysius Galea, died in April 1905, and Preca used to say that Galea appeared to him a few days later and told him, "God has chosen you to teach his people". ¹ He wrote a rule in Latin meant for Pope Pius X, imagining groups of seven permanent deacons in every parish, and began explaining the Gospel of John to Eugenio Borg, the leader of the Hamrun group, who would become the Society's first Superior General. ¹

On February 2, 1907, he gathered the young men for a conference at the Ta' Nuzzo church in Hamrun, and on March 7 they met for the first time in a small rented place in Fra Diegu Street; the Holy See takes those two dates as the Society's beginning. ¹ He first called it the Society of the Sons and Daughters of the Pope, but the shabby room was nicknamed the "museum" and the name stuck. ¹ So he made it an acrostic: Magister Utinam Sequatur Evangelium Universus Mundus, which the Holy See translates "Teacher, O that the whole world would follow the Gospel!" and John Paul II "Divine Teacher, may the whole world follow the Gospel". ¹³ A women's branch followed in 1910, with Giannina Cutajar as its first Superior General. ¹

The Society's site describes the need he saw: a Maltese piety of festivities, fireworks and "a fair amount of superstition", and no organized catechism for ordinary people. ⁶ At a time when the laity had not been recognized as important in spreading the Gospel, it says, he gave lay men and women the responsibility of teaching it. ⁶ The members the Holy See describes lead a simple life, pray short prayers at set intervals through the day, teach children for an hour every day, and then meet for their own formation. ¹

In 1909 he was ordered to close his centers. ¹⁶ The Holy See biography says he obeyed, broken-hearted, until the parish priests protested and the ban was revoked by the Vicar General, Salvatore Grech. ¹ The Society's site tells it the other way round: it was Grech who ordered the closure, on the Archbishop's behalf, alarmed that a priest and a group of youths were opening the Bible for ordinary people. ⁶

In 1914 and 1915 newspapers printed articles and letters attacking the Society. ¹ He had his members take a vow or promise of meekness and taught them "to love the contempt" they suffered. ¹ The Society recounts that around 1916, praying before a picture of Our Lady of Good Counsel on the stairs of his house, he heard the words "Serva Silentium", keep silence, and took them as an instruction not to answer back. ⁸ In 1916 Bishop Mauro Caruana ordered an inquiry; after what the Holy See calls "many humiliations for the founder", the Curia reported favorably, and Caruana canonically erected the Society on April 12, 1932. ¹

Around 1910 he had the experience he called "the extraordinary vision of the child Jesus". ¹ The Holy See places it near the Marsa Cross, the Society on his way home from Paola, by a cross raised on a column. ¹⁸ Both describe a boy of about twelve pushing a cart of manure who ordered him to lend a hand, and a sweetness so great that Preca could never remember where they went. ¹⁸ He understood the boy to be Jesus, asking for help with the Lord's field. ¹

He wrote a great number of books in Maltese on doctrine, morals and spirituality, more than 140 books and pamphlets by the Society's count, at a time when, it says, the language was neglected in the quarrel between Italian and English. ¹⁸ He called the Gospel "The Voice of the Beloved" and wanted people to learn its sentences by heart. ¹ John Paul II singled out his writings on meekness, his book L-Iskola tal-Manswetudni and his Letter. ³

From 1917 he promoted devotion to the words "Verbum Dei caro factum est", the Word was made flesh, and wanted the members to wear them on a badge. ¹ On Christmas Eve 1921 the Society held the first procession in honor of the Child Jesus through the towns and villages of Malta and Gozo, which the Holy See says has become a typical part of Christmas on the islands. ¹ He became a Carmelite tertiary in 1918. ¹ In 1957, the Holy See records, he suggested five "Mysteries of Light" for the private recitation of the Rosary. ¹ In 2002 John Paul II proposed five mysteries of light to the whole Church, from the Baptism in the Jordan to the institution of the Eucharist. ¹⁰

In 1952 he sent the first members to Australia, and the Society is now also in England, Albania, the Sudan, Kenya and Peru. ¹ That year Pius XII made him a Monsignor; the Holy See says he was "mortified" and kept the title only until the Pope died in 1958. ¹ The Society remembers that when an anticlerical man on the Valletta ferry thrust his foot in Preca's face, the priest bent down and kissed it. ⁸

He died on the evening of July 26, 1962, at his house in Santa Venera, according to the Holy See, which says that thousands came to the funeral he had wanted kept simple. ¹ The Society gives some 20,000 people streaming to Hamrun for it, and calls Hamrun his last residence. ⁹ He was buried at the Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal at Blata l-Bajda. ¹ His cause opened in 1975. ⁹

John Paul II beatified him at the Granaries of Floriana on May 9, 2001, calling him "a pioneer in the field of catechetics and in promoting the role of the laity in the apostolate, which the Council was to stress in a particular way". ³⁴ Later that year, on July 24, a newborn boy, Eric Catania, waiting in London for a liver transplant, recovered after his parents prayed for Preca's intercession; EWTN News reports it as the second miracle for the canonization. ⁵ Benedict XVI canonized him in Rome on June 3, 2007, calling him "a friend of Jesus and a witness to the holiness that derives from him". ²

None of the sources consulted for this page names a patronage for George Preca, so none is given here. ¹²³ Benedict XVI asked that he help the Church in Malta and throughout the world "to be always a faithful echo of the voice of Christ, the Incarnate Word". ²

Saint George Preca's feast is May 9. ¹ The Holy See biography gives it in its last line, directly after the beatification: "Fr George Preca was beatified by Pope John Paul II in Malta on 9 May 2001. His liturgical feast is celebrated on 9 May." ¹ It is not the anniversary of his death, which was July 26. ¹⁹

Benedict XVI gave the Church a prayer Preca liked to repeat: "Lord God, how obliged to you I am! Thank you, Lord God, and forgive me, Lord God!" ² It is short enough to say halfway up a staircase, which is where one of the Society's stories places him at prayer. ⁸ The Holy See biography says he taught his members to pray in just that way, in short prayers at set times through a working day. ¹

His answer to being mocked in the newspapers was a vow, for himself and his followers, to be meek. ¹ John Paul II thought that message still needed in Malta and in the world, and said the meekness of the Beatitudes could change families, workplaces, schools and politics. ³ The sources do not suggest it was easy. The Holy See speaks of many humiliations before his Society was approved, twenty-five years after it began. ¹

What he built depended on ordinary people teaching other ordinary people for an hour a day. ¹ He was a priest who trusted lay men and women with the faith before the Council said they should be trusted with it, and John Paul II named that as the heart of his achievement. ³⁶