In about a month’s time, Gozitan bishop-turned-Cardinal Mario Grech will be participating in the next conclave, a unique meeting of the highest 135 cardinals under the age of 80 who get to elect the next pope. But how rare is it for a Maltese person to be one of these select few? Well, the last time it happened was nearly two centuries ago.

Fabrizio Sceberras Testaferrata was born to the noble De Piro family in Valletta on 1st April 1757. Over the next couple of decades, he would rise within the ranks of both the Church in Malta and abroad, before being appointed as titular archbishop of Berytus (the ancient city of Beirut as it was known from the days of antiquity) by Pope Pius VII in 1802.

Eventually, he became Bishop of Italy’s Senigallia, Cardinal Priest of Santa Pudenziana, and on that same day in 1818, Sceberras Testaferrata became the first Maltese person to become a member of the College of Cardinals.

As a result, the Valletta-born Cardinal participated in three separate conclaves, electing Pope Leo XII in 1823, Pope Pius VIII in 1829, and Pope Gregory XVI towards the end of 1830. That was 195 years ago.Fabrizio Sceberras Testaferrata died on 3rd August 1843, and was buried in the Cathedral of Senigallia. And it had to take a century and a half until Malta got its second-ever cardinal.

In February 2012, Pope Benedict XCI appointed 22 cardinals, one of whom was Maltese Augistinian friar and scholar Prospero Grech.

Back in 1963, Grech had actually heard Giovanni Battista Montini’s confession during that year’s Papal conclave mere hours before he was elected as Pope Paul VI, but because he was older than 80 when he was appointed as cardinal, he never actually participated in a conclave. Grech died in 2019 aged 94.

Now, a whole 195 years after Fabrizio Sceberras Testaferrata last voted in a conclave, Gozo’s Mario Grech will finally do it again for Malta… and with rumours of him being a favourite among his peers, could a new record be about to be broken?