The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will visit the islands of Malta and Gozo on May 31.
The one-day trip is the first and only international journey officially on the Pope’s schedule for 2020.
Malta is named in the Acts of the Apostles as the site where St Paul was shipwrecked on route to Rome in 60 A.D. The theme of the papal trip is taken from chapter 28 of the book of Acts: “They showed us unusual kindness.”
Pope Francis praised the Biblical account of the hospitality of the people of Malta during one of his general audience reflections on the Acts of the Apostles last month.
“Spontaneous hospitality and thoughtful gestures communicate something of God’s love. And the hospitality of the Maltese islanders is repaid by the miracles of healing that God works through St. Paul on the island. So if the people of Malta were a sign of God's Providence for the Apostle, he too bore witness to God’s merciful love for them,” Francis said on January 23.
In that audience, the Pope went on to connect the idea of Christian hospitality to the need to welcome migrants, a likely thematic focus of the trip.
The Vatican announcement on February 10 coincides with the feast of St Paul’s Shipwreck, a major public holiday in the Republic of Malta.
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More than 80% of Malta’s population of 493,559 are Catholic, according to the Times of Malta. However, Mass attendance has fallen in recent decades in the traditionally Catholic country.
Malta and Gozo are two of the three major islands that make up the Maltese Archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea, 50 miles south of Italy.
