As the Pope stuck to the script of sorrow and blessing in his letter to the Archbishop, the Catholic Herald editorialised rather more harshly.
It is not so much an obituary for Daphne Caruana Galizia as one for Malta itself.
The UK catholic magazine compared Daphne Caruana Galizia to Elijah, the only prophet of truth followed by a hopeless minority and never able to out-speak the 450 prophets of Baal. And the comparison with Baal is not incidental. The author sees money and greed at the root of our problems as a nation and as the cause of the death to the one who warned us against our sins.
“Malta today, once the jewel of the Mediterranean, is a ruined place – environmentally wrecked, socially divided, morally compromised. It has become rich, true, but once the money flees, what will be left? The reputational damage in the wake of Daphne’s murder is irreparable, I fear.”
The author sees nothing European about Malta. It compares unfavourably with Pakistan where rule of law fired the Prime Minister over Panama Papers. I had actually posted here on the subject when that happened. The closest comparison the author finds is with Russia where being a journalist is a dangerous profession and where people chasing the truth end up dead.
They have ruined our home and from the envy of our neighbours we have become the pitiful ground zero of the civilised world.
The author is Alexander Lucie-Smith who attracted the venomous attack of Joe Grima when he wrote an obituary of Dom Mintoff that Labourites did not like.
For siding with our own Elijah, Alexander Lucie-Smith can expect another campaign of hate from Labour trolls who have been celebrating all week, justifying the brutal assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Joe Grima is no longer here. But expect others to replace him and augur Alexander Lucie-Smith the fate of Elijah for telling us the obvious.
Keep shooting the messengers. By the end of it there may be no one left to pick up the pieces of the wreckage of this drunken orgy of greed, hate and destruction on the altar of Baal.