On the right is the titular statue of the Holy Virgin with Child exposed in the centre of the church for the occasion of the festa. On the left is a close up of the same statue which I took some days earlier. It is the custom in the whole of Malta to bring out the statue of the patron saint of the parish from its niche on the Sunday prior to festa day. This is done with great ceremony. The statue is then placed in the most conspicuous place of the church for veneration until the feast day. Both my wife and me were baptised in this parish church, but my baptism was a few years earlier. My family moved to another parish (still in Sliema) when I was a boy. Now we live in San Gwann which is, so to speak, a suburb of Sliema. But we both love Sliema, our birthplace.
