The story
Feast of St Gregory Zejtun in Zejtun
The feast of St Gregory in Zejtun is marked by a distinctive penitential pilgrimage tradition held on the Wednesday after Easter, known locally as Il-Gimgha tal-Gharb or more commonly as San Girgor, in which people from across Malta walk or travel to Zejtun's chapel of St Gregory to give thanks, historically for deliverance from plague. It differs from the typical summer festa format, being older, more solemn and centred on pilgrimage rather than a statue procession and fireworks.
Long before Malta's elaborate summer festas took their modern form of statue processions, competing band clubs and rival fireworks displays, communities across the island already observed a very different kind of religious custom each spring: a pilgrimage to Zejtun's chapel of St Gregory on the Wednesday following Easter, remembered in local tradition as thanksgiving for the community's deliverance from historic outbreaks of plague.