CHILDREN PLAY IN STREET ON ST PAUL'S DAY, 2000-02-10 (photo)

A young boy hurls a bale of papers and confetti into the air in the street outside St. Paul's Shipwreck Church in Valletta on February 10. A Maltese tradition is to shower the statue of a patron saint, in this case St Paul, when the saint's statue passes through the streets in a procession, covering the streets in a thick layer of paper. St Paul's Shipwreck day is one of the holiest in the Maltese Church calendar. St Paul came to Malta around 60 A.D. when the ship taking him to Rome was shipwrecked on Malta, and converted the islanders to Christianity. DZL/WS