Masonic feud over Villa Blye as rivals lawyer up

Malta’s rival freemasons are at loggerheads over the ownership of one of the island’s longest-serving homes to freemasonry – Villa Blye, in Paola.

Now that conflict is seeing the ‘breakaway’ lodge Grand Lodge of Malta (GLOM) lawyering up to demand that the Sovereign Grand Lodge of Malta move out of Villa Blye.

Restaurateur Ben Muscat, worshipful master of the GLOM, sought out the services of veteran lawyer Ian Refalo with a cease-and-desist warning to the SGLOM’s Anthony Cilia Pisani.

Muscat said Cilia Pisani had to return the lodge’s warrants, minutes and attendance books, cheques books, regalia and correspondence files to the GLOM.

Villa Blye, a property worth millions and which stands adjacent to MCAST, was also the meeting place for the Saint Andrew Lodge, a Scottish Constitution masonic lodge. The English masonic groups meet at the Marsamxetto Street freemason’s lodge in Malta, where the SGLOM also meets.

The SGLOM briefly met at Villa Blye until the locks on the Paola property were changed, and members from the Grand Lodge then joined the SGLOM as ‘Fenici Lodge’.

Sources from the Grand Lodge told MaltaToday the GLOM intends retaking possession of Villa Blye. “My clients have the ownership through the entities mentioned in the original deed owning the premises in question. You are therefore being instructed to withhold form interfering with the management of said property,” Refalo told Cilia Pisani in his letter. “Failure to comply with these instructions will entail further action in accordance with the law.”

The Lodge of St John and St Paul continues to this day as the oldest masonic lodge in Malta, where it meets at the Marsamxetto Road freemasons’ hall run by the English lodges loyal to the United Grand Lodge of England.

The St John and St Paul, and the De Rohan Lodge (1998) work under the UGLE. Other lodges include the Count Roger of Normandy (1988), the Fenici Lodge (1991), and the De Rohan Lodge (1998).

In 2004, the ‘Irish lodges’ – the Leinster (1851), Abercorn (1899) and Fenici (1999) – resolved to join into the Sovereign Grand Lodge of Malta. Other subordinate lodges were created since then under the banner of the SGLOM.