Hajja Salesjana January March 2018

26 Strange as it may seem, the community of St. Patrick’s was attached to the English Province and the Oratory, not yet being a canonically erected community, was the responsibility of the Sicilian Province. All the first six Directors of the Oratory came from Sicily but they were members of the St. Patrick’s community. In 1921, Fr. Paul Albera, successor of Don Rua as Rector Major, visited Malta and a year later he gave the Sliema Oratory its first canonically erected community, with Sicilian Fr. Vincent Allegra as its first Rector. For 32 years, the Directors and Rectors of the Sliema Oratory were Sicilians, save for Fr. Philip Borg (1918-1921) who was Maltese. In 1921, the Oratory community opened a small school for poor children, at ‘Sashebo’ 14, St. John Bosco Street, Sliema, opposite the Salesian Theatre. In 1928, the Salesians inherited a house for young people in Zabbar from John Baptist Cachia, a project that did not materialise in salesian terms. The two Salesian houses of Sliema were built opposite each other in what is now called St. John Bosco Street. A research compiled by Fr. Francis Zammit SDB and others History Of The Maltese Salesian Delegation