Dun Ġorġ Preca: The Process Towards Sainthood

The cause for Dun Ġorġ Preca’s beatification was initiated through a decree by Archbishop Michael Gonzi in 1975. Nine year earlier, on the 3^rd February 1964, Mr Charles Zammit Endrich’s detached retina healed unexplainably after he placed a relic of the late priest underneath his pillow.

Dun Ġorg Preca was declared venerable in 1999 and Blessed in 2001 a few months after Pope John Paul II signed a decree which officially confirmed Mr Zammit Endrich’s healing. But it would take another miracle and six more years until the Vatican would deem it fitting to make him a saint.

The cause for Dun Ġorġ Preca’s sainthood was carried forward when a 29-day old infant requiring a transplant for severe liver problems was given an all clear by doctors on the 24th July 2001, less than two months after one of Malta’s most well known and loved priests was declared Blessed. The child’s family turned to God through prayer, with the intercession of Dun Ġorġ Preca, when they were told that a donor with a compatible liver could not be found.The family also placed a glove, used during the exhumation of the priest a few months earlier, upon the infant’s body.

One year after the child’s unexplainable healing, the Ecclesiastical Tribunal under the leadership of Mons. Arthur Said Pullicino, commenced the Diocesan Process to study the case.

The Tribunal heard 38 Maltese witnesses including medical experts Dr. Alfred Caruana Galizia and Dr. Simon A ttard Montalto. The Tribunal also heard Profs. Dr. Anil Dhawan from King’s College Hospital, who confirmed that there was no scientific explanation for the sudden improvement in the child’s health.

The Diocesan Process came to an end on the 19th June 2004, with Mons. Joseph Mecieca signing the case documents during a mass celebrated ay St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta.

The documents were sent to the Vatican in Rome, where the Congregation for the Causes of Saints agreed that the Maltese process analyzing the case was a valid one on 17th December 2004. Doctors and Theologists of the Congregation also discussed the case in 2006, both submitting positive verdicts.

The child’s healing was approved as miracle by Pope Benedict XVI on the 14^th February 2007. A Consortium of Cardinals held a week later on the 23^rd of February backed this decision, unofficially declaring Dun Ġorġ Preca as Malta’s first saint.

Dun Ġorġ will be officially made a saint during a special Mass held at the Vatican on the 3^rd June 2007, with thousands of Maltese pilgrims attending the celebrations.