As one of the most popular Maltese priests of the 20th century, Dun Ġorg Preca is by many believed to have brought a revolution in the nation’s Church by redefining the status and role of laics.
Ġorġ Preca was born in Valletta on the 12th February 1880 and was the seventh of nine children. Early in his childhood, his family moved to Ħamrun, where he started serving Mass as an altar boy, indicating he was interested in the Maltese Church from the very first years of his life.
After finishing his studies at the Lyceum Ġorġ Preca entered the seminary and was ordained a deacon. In the meantime he suffered lung failure and was discouraged from buying vestments or a missal in preparation for the priesthood because of his bleak prognosis.
However, on the 22nd December 1906 he was ordained a priest, after a remarkable recovery.
During his time at the seminary, Ġorġ Preca would often offer his fellow companions words of wisdom, among them a phrase he has heard from his confessor and spiritual director Diun Alwiġ Galea: “God has chosen you to teach His People.” Dun Ġorġ Preca lived by these words and often repeated them to those who crossed his path.
The words are also reflected in an idea he toyed with early during priesthood, namely to prepare youths so they would be able to offer others religious formation. Just three months after being ordained a priest on the 7th March 1907, the Society of Christian Doctrine, a society of lay catechists, was born. On this day Dun Ġorġ Preca rented a house on Fra Diegu Street in Ħamrun and gathered young men and women there to teaching them catechism.
In 1909, the priest was ordered to close down premises where he held his activities amid fears that the laymen trained by his society were not well-educated enough, despite Dun Ġorġ’s insistence on the permanent instruction of his "soċi" (members). He wrote 135 books in order to give them a solid formation.
The Maltese Curia eventually retracted the order; however the society, commonly referred to as M.U.S.E.U.M, was not approved by Archbishop Mauro Caruana and other ecclesiastical authorities until 1932, when a decree of the canonical (legal) erection of the Society was issued on the 12th April.
The acronym M.U.S.E.U.M refers to the word ‘museum’, through which the word of God is to be conserved, as well as to the latin words ‘Magister utinam sequatur Evangeliium universus mundus’: Father, make it that the whole world follows the Evangel.
By the time WWII dawned, the group was carrying out its activities in all Maltese and Gozitan parishes.
For 54 years, Dun Ġorġ Preca did his utmost so that the M.U.S.E.U.M would flourish. However in 1961 he started experiencing serious health problems and was forced retire indoors. He died on the 26th July 1962 in Sta Venera.
Today, the Society consists of approximately 110 centers and 1,100 members. Altogether, it is responsible for about 20,000 young men and women in the Maltese islands, in Australia, Peru, Sudan, United Kingdom, Kenya and Albania.