Malta needs a “collective awakening” from apathy that has rendered us “ like the three monkeys of history – seeing nothing, hearing nothing, and saying nothing”, Cardinal Mario Grech said on Friday.
Delivering his sermon during the celebration of the feast of Santa Marija at the Gozo Cathedral, Cardinal Grech issued a stark warning about what he termed as the passive indifference of society in the face of various forms of suffering, be it of war-torn Gaza, euthanasia or the “ecological grief” of over-development.
The cardinal, who serves as Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, has been appointed by Pope Leo XIV as his Special Envoy to a celebration marking fifty years since the coronation of the altarpiece of the Assumption in the Cathedral of Gozo.
Grech expressed his dismay about the general “deliberate” apathy that seems to have gripped the islands, remarking that “we have convinced ourselves that it suits us to be indifferent in the face of life’s tragic situations”.
“We choose not to feel, not to suffer, to close our eyes in the face of what might make us experience suffering,” the Cardinal said, adding that we have become “anaesthetised to the point that we no longer notice the suffering around us”.
As festa fireworks lit up skies bringing joy and awe, Cardinal Grech pointed out that the people of Gaza have been enduring a “rain of bombs wreaking havoc” for months. While we all celebrated with bountiful food and drink, “in Gaza there are people dying of hunger and thirst.”
“Why is it that in the face of this atrocious suffering, so many remain spectators? How is it, in this scenario of wars, that we have managed to “educate” our conscience into remaining silent, forgetting that silence is complicity?”
Cardinal Grech spoke out powerfully against euthanasia, saying that this intolerance to suffering extends to terminal illness and has made us “inclined to choose to kill”.
“Some believe the quickest way to deal with situations of terminal illness is by hastening the process of death. Precisely because we have lost the ability to empathise with those who are suffering, precisely because we have come to detest placing our hands on our neighbour’s wounds — perhaps also because we think it is not right to spend money for nothing! — we are becoming inclined to choose to kill,” he said.
The Cardinal denounced over-development and the “greed for money” leading to exploitation of the environment.
“How many of us pay attention to what is called “ecological grief,” that is, the emotional suffering felt by those who witness the destruction of the environment? The greed for money is leading to much of our environment being exploited; what some call development is nothing more than the irresponsible possession of environmental heritage which we have a duty to conserve, even to spare future generations from suffering and anxiety.”
He concluded with a call for a “collective awakening” from a system that has “made us more individualistic, passive, and indifferent in the face of so many forms of suffering”.