On 30th March a new night shelter for the homeless was inaugurated in Tbilisi, capital of Georgia.

Opened in the premises of the Catholic Church of St. Mary of the Assumption, it offers ten beds. Besides a place to sleep, it also provides people in financial difficulty with breakfast, healthcare and the use of a laundry. During the winter, the temperature in Tbilisi can drop to minus zero.

The Order of Malta’s Grand Hospitaller Dominique de La Rochefoucauld-Montbel and its Georgian Ambassador Marcello Celestini symbolically cut the ribbon in the presence of Msgr. Giuseppe Pasotto, Bishop of Tblisi and of the Apostolic Administration of the Caucasus for the Latin Catholic Church.

In his speech, Ambassador Celestini said that the project was launched about a year ago. When speaking with Msgr. Pasotto “he told me that when Pope Francis came on a pastoral visit to Georgia he invited everyone to continue the Year of Mercy through charitable works. He proposed setting up a modern and comfortable shelter for the homeless in the city centre. I accepted willingly because the Order of Malta’s humanitarian diplomacy aims precisely to relieve the suffering and misery of the abandoned, the poor and the sick”.

The shelter came into being thanks to the financing of the Order of Malta’s Global Fund for the Forgotten People.