Malta Mormons Mourn: Tiny Island Congregation Grieves with US Church after Shooting

**Four Killed in Attack on Northern US Mormon Church: Malta’s Tiny LDS Community Grieves from Afar**

Valletta – As news broke of a horrific shooting at a Mormon church in the northern United States that left four worshippers dead, Malta’s own minuscule Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) congregation gathered in a quiet Ħamrun flat to pray for the victims—half a world away, yet spiritually next-door.

The attack, which unfolded during Sunday services in a small-town chapel near the Canadian border, has shaken the global Latter-day Saint community of 17 million, including the 170-or-so members officially registered in Malta. Here, where the faith’s first baptism took place only in 1852 and where the island’s first (and still only) chapel opened in Paceville in 1984, the tragedy feels both distant and intimately personal.

“It’s like losing cousins you’ve never met,” explains Sister Rebecca Vella, a third-generation Maltese Latter-day Saint who translated the First Presidency’s condolence letter into Maltese for the local WhatsApp group. “Our sacrament meeting yesterday began with a minute of silence; you could hear the buses on St Joseph High Road. Four empty chairs were left at the front—one for each soul lost.”

Malta’s LDS history is itself a story of resilience. Early missionaries were pelted with tomatoes in Birgu; a 1910s law banned proselytising until British servicemen lobbied for freedom of worship. Today, the congregation—40% Maltese, 60% expat—meets in a renovated townhouse because planning constraints have stalled a larger chapel project since 2016. The shooting, members say, sharpens their own sense of vulnerability.

“Security has never been our big worry; parking is,” jokes Elder Jean-Paul Cachia, the Maltese branch president, quickly adding that police have agreed to extra patrols this week after the US embassy flagged “general threat awareness.” Still, the branch will keep its front door—painted in typical Maltese green—unlocked during services. “Closing it would feel like closing the gospel,” he shrugs.

Across the island, inter-faith leaders rushed to express solidarity. Archbishop Charles Scicluna tweeted a prayer “for our Mormon brothers and sisters,” while Imam El Sadi called the attack “a wound in the body of all believers.” The Malta Interfaith Network laid white flowers—Mormons’ symbol of resurrection—outside the Ħamrun meetinghouse, drawing curious neighbours who asked if “il-Mormoni” were some new scout troop.

Tourism operators, still chasing the pre-pandemic 60,000 American visitors, fear collateral damage. “US headlines scream ‘church shooting’; Maltese headlines echo it,” worries Philip Fenech, vice-president of the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association. “We’ve already had two LDS-themed cruise groups inquire about cancelling Mediterranean stops. Every American scared to leave home is a potential lost booking.”

Locally, the tragedy has sparked a wider debate on gun culture that feels abstract in a country where even police officers seldom carry firearms. Times of Malta’s Facebook page exploded with comments comparing “American gun madness” to Malta’s own rising knife crime. One reader posted: “We argue over firecrackers; they argue over assault rifles.” Opposition MP Karol Aquilina tabled a parliamentary question asking whether Malta’s 2021 firearms amnesty should be renewed “so we never import the US nightmare.”

For young Maltese Latter-day Saints, the killings have prompted soul-searching about mission plans. Ritianne Borg, 19, from Żejtun, was called to serve in the Utah Salt Lake City mission next January. “My nonna begged me to request reassignment to Italy,” she admits, fingering her small Maltese-flag pin. “But staying home would betray the belief that Christ’s message is stronger than bullets.”

Back in Ħamrun, the branch’s youth group will fast this Friday, donating the saved euro coins to a victims’ fund organised by the Rome mission. Between hymn verses in Maltese-accented English, they’ll remember that the first LDS martyr, Joseph Smith, was himself shot by a mob in 1844. “Persecution isn’t new,” President Cachia reminds them. “But neither is hope.”

As candles flicker against limestone walls, Malta’s Mormons testify that faith, like island stone, is shaped by storms yet stands. Four thousand miles away, four families bury their dead; here, a hundred tiny lights promise they won’t be forgotten.