The St George’s Basilica Good Friday Committee, which organises the annual Penitential Procession of the Passion of Our Lord, is currently working on a very ambitious project: the commission of new statues carved in wood with the aim of having one complete set of the same artistic level. The project, launched a few years ago, is now in full motion, as the second statue has already been delivered to the basilica by Gozitan sculptors Michael and his son Adonai Camilleri Cauchi.The Good Friday procession of St George’s Basilica, which the church said is the oldest on the island, is the only one in Malta to have kept its totally penitential and devotional nature. The organisers are very keen on avoiding the introduction of elements which would ruin its traditional uniqueness. Documented as early as 1788, the procession originally was in the care of the old Confraternity of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, but later on it was passed onto the hands of the procurator of the Confraternity of the Holy Crucifix, set up in 1893. Nowadays, an enthusiastic team of volunteers looks after its organisation.

In 1848, Valletta artist Pietru Pawl Azzopardi, who ten years earlier had already sculpted in wood the titular statue of St George, was commissioned to carve in wood the devotional statue of the Holy Crucifix, which remains the main attraction of the procession and of the whole Passion cult at St George’s. It is now housed in a recently-built neo-Byzantine chapel in the basilica. Azzopardi had also carved in wood the faces for St John and Our Lady to accompany the same statue, which is popularly known as Il-Vara l-Kbira. The set contains also a wooden statue for the urn of Christ’s Entombment, or Il-Monument, which was sculpted in wood by Alessandro Farrugia in 1844, and a beautiful face for St Veronica which was brought from Marseilles, originally for the Blessed Virgin’s statue beneath the Cross.

Other statues in the set are more recent additions in fibre or papier-mâché by Wistin Camilleri and his sons Alfred and Michael. The present set includes the two statues of Christ’s Flagellation and the Ecce Homo, which are just copies of two older statues from the original set which are now kept at the Cathedral parish church and used for that procession. The latest addition to the St George’s set, in wood, is the beautiful statue of the Risen Lord (1997), which, as happened in other cases, replaced a much older precious statue. The latter, together with three very old statues of the Ecce Homo, St Veronica and the Holy Crucifix, are part of the prestigious collection of treasures kept in the basilica’s vestry halls and waiting for restoration.

The church said that one of the unique features in this procession is certainly the fact that in its more than two centuries of history it has kept to its penitential and traditional nature. Penitents dragging chains or carrying large wooden crosses follow some of the stations, and the statues themselves are clothed in linen as in Birgu. Nowadays this procession takes place on Good Friday evening every two years and on Maundy Thursday, after the function, every other year. An old tradition of displaying a statue each time in the basilica on the Fridays of Lent helps the faithful to meditate on the Way of Cross.

Three year ago the Good Friday Committee, decided to embark on a new project to have new Passion statues sculpted in wood which would complement Azzopardi’s miraculous Holy Crucifix and add to the unique collection of highly artistic Baroque wooden statues at St George’s Basilica. Artist Michael Camilleri Cauchi, together with his son Adonai, were entrusted with the commission, which is being funded by private benefactors. The artistic statue, truly original in presentation and portraying several anatomic details, shows the suggestive figure of Christ, tied to a high column, in a state of great pain after being whipped and beaten by his aggressors. The types of mahogany wood which have been used for this statue are utile and swietenia. In the last months, Michael and Adonai carved the wooden statue at their study in Nadur, while carpenter Ino M. Attard made the column, which in itself is also a work of art. In the last few days the statue was brought to Ino’s carpenter shop in Library Street where works continued.

Meanwhile, work on the first statue of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is still underway. This will include only the face and hands of Jesus and of course the statue of the angel, since the rest of the body is a mannequin clothed in precious linen, as is the case of other statues in line with a very old tradition.

The new wooden statue is being exhibited in the Chapel of the Blessed Names of Jesus and Mary, at St George’s Basilica, today and tomorrow, before it is taken back to the artists’ studio for polychromatic finishing. It will be then officially inaugurated and blessed on Saturday, the 16th of April 2011, at the La Stella Band’s Holy Week concert, after it is accompanied by funerary band marches from Republic Street to the Basilica, starting at 7pm.

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