My favourite object

Abstract

The object I would like to present is not from my own personal collection but from a collection that I had been entrusted to catalogue at a time when much, including ourselves, had been locked behind closed doors. In the first eerie months of the Covid-19 pandemic, having found myself like most others with no access to my office at the Curia, I decided to use my time to draw up an inventory of the Jesuits’ Church in Valletta. As my assistants and I, keeping the necessary social distance required, started opening up cupboard after cupboard, we discovered numerous interesting artefacts. Neither piles of dust nor evident insect infestation disheartened us in uncovering what seemed to be a limitless number of notable objects, from the standard candlestick, archival ledgers, embroidered vestments, to some curious relics that evoked the presence of those who had worked in this place before us.