IMAGE CREDIT: Diocese of Gozo, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Grech:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_grech_m.html
Mario Grech on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2020.htm#Grech
Cardinal Grech on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/3529
Cardinal Grech on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bgrechm.html
Diocese of Gozo on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/gozo0.htm?tab=info
Diocese of Gozo on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dgozo.html
2023 English-language interview with Cardinal Mario Grech (via EWTN):
https://youtu.be/5RCy0fNOyUE?si=6ZuVOX4XY_8D507q
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Mario Grech was born on February 20, 1957, in Qala, Malta, Qala being a small community on the eastern edge of the island of Gozo, Gozo being the *second* largest island in Malta after, well, the Island of Malta, with Malta itself being a small island nation a bit south of Sicily. At a young age, the family moved to Ta' Kerċem, another small community on the same island.
Malta is an outsize name in the history of the Catholic Church, thanks to its hosting of the military order of Saint John of Jerusalem, aka the Hospitallers or more simply the Knights of Malta in the early modern period. Their holding out against Suleiman the Magnificent's Ottoman Empire–who, in fairness, had *successfully* kicked the Hospitallers out of the Greek Island of Rhodes earlier in his career–that success at the Great Siege of Malta was so famous that noted enemy of the Church Voltaire once said “Nothing is better known than the siege of Malta” (Annals of the Empire, 1753)
Also, to get this out of the way, there was recently a Maltese Cardinal by the name of Prosper Grech. I haven't seen it explicitly confirmed that the two Cardinals *aren't* related, but I haven't seen anyone suggest that they are either. So… maybe, but probably not? Grech *is* a common Maltese surname, to the extent that a random third party commenting on the passing of the older Cardinal also had the last name of Grech.
Anyways, let's actually talk about today's cardinal some, shall we? The island of Gozo has fewer than 40,000 people altogether, but in heavily Catholic Malta, that's enough to support a local seminary, which is where Mario went when he decided to start his priestly studies. Unusually, he did both his philosophy and theology studies at that same institution. It wasn't until after his 1984 ordination that he went further afield, being sent to Rome to study both canon and civil law at the Pontifical Lateran University. Following the pattern of some of our more bookish Cardinals, Father Grech then obtained a doctorate in canon law from the Angelicum.
While studying his doctorate and for a span after, Father Grech ministered at the cathedral, at the National Shrine of Tá-Pinu, and also served as a parish priest at the parish of Kercem. You're not going to be too surprised that he also taught canon law at the local seminary and held a number of roles within
