life size statues of Pope John Paul II and Pope Pius IX outside the Cittadella Cathedral have to be pulled down as they were illegally erected.On 24 July 2006, Mepa issued an enforcement notice, ordering the cathedral to remove two new monuments commemorating the two popes, as no permits were sought before they were placed at the top of the church’s parvis.
A week later, Mepa had already included the removal of the two monuments in its list of illegalities requiring “direct action” by the authority’s enforcement unit.
The cathedral’s Centenary Committee filed an application to Mepa, in the hope of obtaining a permit for the two monuments before Mepa moves in to pull them down. Mepa refused to grant a permit, stating that the monuments ruin the historical value of the cathedral’s façade, a Grade 1 listed site of archaeological importance. The site where the monuments are located is also protected as an Area of High Landscape Value, and the monuments create a negative visual impact in the square outside the cathedral. In 2007, the cathedral asked Mepa to reconsider this decision, hoping that the two monuments will not have to be removed.
The Planning Directorate’s Reconsideration Report is recommending the Mepa board to stick to its original decision and insist on the removal of the two monuments.
The board was scheduled to discuss this development last week, but the administration of the cathedral, which filed the application, asked Mepa to postpone a final decision, to give time to the new parish priest of the cathedral to review the application and study new proposals.
While Mepa is insisting that the monuments have to go as they are ruining an important historical site, the cathedral’s administration is insisting that monuments outside churches are not an eyesore but an embellishment.Sources close to the cathedral’s administration even remarked that while Mepa is placing a lot of emphasis on the monuments outside the cathedral in Cittadella, no action is being taken to remove other illegally erected monuments in Gozo.
No alternative location for the two monuments has yet been identified.
Architect Lorenza Gafa was entrusted with the building of the Cittadella church on the site of another church, which was damaged by a 1693 earthquake.
Gafa died before it was completed in 1711.
Pope Pius IX established the Diocese of Gozo in 1864 and the Cittadella church became the Gozo Cathedral .
As things stand, the very pope who established this church as the Gozo Cathedral, and Pope John Paul II, the only pope ever to visit Gozo, may soon be getting the axe, almost literally.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Sotto Voce