American loony: ‘Witchcraft’ cases accuse St Julian’s local council, Dragonara casino and MP

Guess who is being accused of witchcraft?

The Nationalist MP, and former mayor of St Julian’s, Albert Buttigieg – according to a case filed by an American national from Los Angeles, flagged to this newspaper by an online news alert.

One Victoria Tenisha Shanae Dillihunt, in an entirely handwritten and extensive claim of over 400 pages, is taking on the world of ‘witches’: filing dozens of cases against freemasonry lodges, various Catholic charities, non-Christian denominations and their churches, the fashion company Michael Kors, the pharmaceutical retailer Walgreens, American businesswoman Martha Stewart, and even rappers Dr Dre and Sean Paul.

But the reason why someone like Albert Buttigieg has unknowingly been placed as a ‘respondent’ to this case, which is bound to be dismissed, happens to be Saint Julian, the Hospitaller saint venerated by Roman Catholics.

According to Dillihunt’s rambling, conspiracy-laden treatise, any connection to Catholic saints is to be treated as a case of witchcraft – and as it happens, she has also sued, for no apparent reason except for being located in St Julian’s, the municipality itself, the Dragonara Casino, and the Westin Dragonara Hotel. As former mayor, Albert Buttigieg is a ‘defendant’ to the case.

Indeed, the same lawsuit accuses of witchcraft all known associations with St Julian – and that means that apart from the town of St Julian’s in Malta, there are also the cities of Ghent in Belgium and Macerata in Italy, which have Julian as their patron saint. Other municipalities in the suit are the Mexican town of San Julian in Jalisco, Mexico.

The strange case is not even bound to have a hearing. By proceeding via ‘forma pauperis’, a suit most commonly brought by prisoners, the case will be subject to the discretion of the court. Once three ‘forma pauperis’ lawsuits are dismissed for being malicious, frivolous, or failing to state claim, such claimants will be prohibited from filing these cases anymore.

MaltaToday could not establish if Dilligate was a prisoner at the time of the filing of the cases, 44 in all filed between January and August, with over 100 defendants named by Dilligate.

The legend of St Julian is that the night he was born, witches laid a curse on him that would make him kill both his parents. As he learned of this curse upon becoming a young man, Julian exiled himself in a bid never to hurt his parents. A different version is that it was a stag he hunted, at the age of 10, that informed him of the curse.

Many years later after his departure, his parents set out to look for their 30-year-old son in Galicia, Spain, where Julian’s wife welcomed them home while he was out hunting. Julian’s parents were accommodated in his room, but bedevilled by an evil influence, Julian was told his wife had been with another man – upon returning and finding the sleeping couple in his bed, thinking they were his wife and her lover, he killed them both. When he discovered his mistake, he vowed to spend the rest of his life doing charitable works.

Devotion to St Julian started in the Maltese islands in the 15th century after the discovery of his relics in the city of Macerata. It was introduced by the noble family of De Astis, a high-ranking in Malta at the time, who had strong connections with the Bishop of Macerata.