[WATCH] ‘Our float should be a wake-up call to the Church’

[WATCH] 'Our float should be a wake-up call to the Church'

A slightly altered design of the float depicting Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna will still make its way to the Valletta carnival parade in February, despite all the criticism it has received so far.

Rayvin Galea, the artist behind the float’s design, said he hoped to get across various issues which he feels have not properly addressed by the Church.

They included its opposition to same-sex marriage, depicted on his float through a figurine of a gay couple on top of a wedding cake, while the Church’s opposition to IVF takes the form of, controversially, two horned cherubs.

Scicluna will come decked in some military uniform, which Galea says represents the Church’s conservative stance on many social issues. Missing will be the words St Joseph’s Home above the Scicluna effigy, the reference to the sexual abuse of children in the late 80s at the Church orphanage. The float also features Lady Justice with a blindfold, a balance, and a sword, showcasing the lack of justice received by the victims of the abuse.

“We hope the float serves as a wake-up call for the Church, whose hard-line stance on a variety of social issues has pushed people away from it,” Galea said.

The original design

Since making the rounds on social media, the float received a flurry of mixed reactions. While some called on the design to be completely scrapped, others insisted that freedom of expression entails satire to be directed at the head of the Catholic Church in Malta.

“If people came here and asked us to explain to them the design, their reaction would be totally different,” Galea insisted. He said the design submitted to Festivals Malta was a condensation of the 3D float into a two-dimensional picture, which aims to give the best possible impression of the overall float.

Galea says his sketch had remained unchanged, contesting Festivals Malta’s claim that the original sketch lacked the further details that “increased the defamatory element”.

“They only told us that if we didn’t change some aspects to the float we would be disqualified, but when they came here and saw the on-going work, they confirmed that their sketch was identical to mine and nothing was changed,” Galea said.

With the final float design expected to have some minor changes, such as the words ‘St Joseph Home’ being removed, Galea was asked why he would be carrying out the amendments if no law was being broken.

“I decided to remove the words as they may come out as a little aggressive, but I was never referring to the present-day orphanage, but to the situation when those atrocities happened,” he said.

Asked if they plan to participate with another satirical float next year, the team behind the project said that they plan to come out even stronger. “Most definitely, we already have something in the pipeline,” Galea said.

READ MORE: Censorship in Malta: from ‘Li tkisser sewwi’ to a carnival pastiche