‘Hate’ is an overused verb. When I write in criticism of someone, I’m often accused of hate. Usually, it’s fans of politicians who think of their idols as some people think of Marmite: they love them but those who don’t must necessarily be hating them. They don’t conceive of the possibility of anything in between.

But I make no apologies for nazis. I hate nazis. I don’t criticise them, protest against them, satirise or mock them. I hate them. I can’t think of any other category of people that would earn that verb from me. There is no room in a civilisation I belong to for people who think we are not equal, some people should have rights and some others should not, it is ok to discriminate because this corner of the world belongs to ‘us’, not ‘them’. Thinking like that is taking the road to the concentration camp. There’s no compromise to be had with that view of the world.

The Archbishop yesterday was explicit in disassociating his church from the insane endorsement of Norman Lowell by David Muscat, a Catholic priest that lives in Mosta. He was characteristically swift and categorical, which is as he should have been. His tweet was up just after 6.30 yesterday afternoon. That’s just three hours after the story broke on this website and then spread on the other news portals.


But Fr Charles Scicluna has more work to do. Attitudes of hate penetrate a church built on a theology of love surprisingly easy.

Not far from where David Muscat lives, Mosta Church is preparing for the feast of St Mary now less than two weeks away.

Many volunteers are busy decorating the church and the streets of the town, the band clubs are spending all the money they raised throughout the year and preparations for fireworks are now in their final stages.

One such volunteer is Leli Vella who on his Facebook page wanted to thank his wife for living without him most of the year while he finished the rockets being fired at the upcoming feast. And now he’s ready to shoot them in the general direction of St Mary in tribute of whom he has been working so hard.

Take a closer look at those rockets.

Is that meant to be funny? Or is it meant to be smart?

What justifies decorating petards in nazi paraphernalia? And though I can see that many people do not mind shuffling the sacred and the profane, are the assumption of the Virgin and the murderous Third Reich really compatible themes?

I will be told that I’m faking outrage. That this is a joke in poor taste. That surely the fireworks enthusiasts of Mosta are not nostalgic for the industrial extermination of Jews, Poles, homosexuals and other “deviants”.

Perhaps they are and perhaps they aren’t. But maybe, if they just want to indulge their delusional, isolated patriotic instincts they should fancy a conversation with their great grandparents who celebrated the feast of St Mary in 1942 and ask them how they would have appreciated the Reichsadler emblazoned on fireworks supposedly built in tribute to St Mary.

I accept this is an emotional, perhaps not entirely rational argument. But I warned you from the outset. I hate nazis.