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Karl Schembri
The priest who five years ago was Rector at St Augustine’s College has ended up registering as unemployed after he was banned by the Archbishop from teaching in schools and from celebrating sacraments for the last four years.
Fr Jesmond Balzan, 42, a former Augustinian friar, was given official permission by the Vatican to leave his order following his request, while remaining in the priesthood. But for the last four years, Archbishop Guzeppi Mercieca has been telling him that his pastoral services were “not needed” in the Maltese diocese, refusing even to let him teach religion for a living.
“I have finally decided to speak publicly, because I can’t bear this any longer,” Fr Balzan told MaltaToday. “I know I’m not the only priest to be going through this, to be stopped by the Archbishop from practicing my vocation without being given any reason whatsoever. Parishioners keep asking what happened and I can’t even defend myself.”
Fr Balzan had asked for leave of absence from the convent in September 2001, after which he moved to the Qormi parish of St Sebastian where he said mass and confessed parishioners for some months until the Archbishop convened him at the Curia to tell him that his “pastoral work is not required”.
“I was devastated; it was totally out of the blue, a decision already taken,” Fr Balzan, who for the Vatican remains a member of the clergy, said. “The following day I attended mass with the rest of the people, with everyone asking what had happened and thinking God knows what. Since then he has refused to tell me why he stopped me, although the community’s and other priests’ support never waned.”
While the order had sustained Fr Balzan financially for a year since his departure from the convent, by 2002 he had started teaching religion at San Andrea school, but the next academic year he was informed by the headmaster there that the Curia had objected to his teaching post, given the Archbishop’s exclusive monopoly on who teaches religion in all of Malta’s schools – be they church-owned, independent or state schools.
Even more curiously, the Archbishop had asked Fr Balzan to say mass at the Augustinian nuns’ chapel in Hal Qormi in 2003.
“Then the Vatican’s official permission to leave the order arrived in December 2003, and the Archbishop again stopped me from saying mass at the chapel,” Fr Balzan says. “He didn’t suspend me from the priesthood; he actually addressed me as ‘father’ and his ‘brother in priesthood’, but said I wasn’t needed. Yet they say there’s a crisis of vocations.”
Fr Balzan said that even though he no longer belonged to the Augustinian order, the Provincial, Fr Lucjan Borg, was very supportive of him, even financially.
Contacted, Fr Borg said even he was never informed by the Archbishop for the reasons behind his decision to stop Fr Balzan from acting as a priest.
“The only thing the Archbishop had told me was that it had nothing to do with Fr Jesmond’s moral integrity, something I never doubted about him,” Fr Borg said.
The Archbishop’s spokesman, Charles Buttigieg, said Mgr Mercieca “never comments on what takes place in his private exchanges with priests” when asked specifically about this case.
The acceptance of Fr Balzan as a former religious order member by Mgr Mercieca is referred to in Canon Law as ‘incardination’.
“The incardination of former religious orders’ members into a diocese is regulated by Canon Law,” Buttigieg said. “Archbishop Mgr Mercieca, as is his duty, follows Canon Law.”
But asked if the Archbishop has a policy of not informing priests about the reasons for stopping them from giving pastoral services, Buttigieg said: “The Archbishop insists that this has never been the case.”
Fr Balzan said: “I don’t accept that claim. The Archbishop never told me why he stopped me.”
Buttigieg did confirm that the Archbishop has an unofficial policy of not accepting former religious people into his diocese.
“In recent years, there was only one former religious order member who was incardinated into the Archdiocese of Malta,” Buttigieg said. “He is now dead.”
He said nine former religious people, referred to as ‘extra cloistral’, have not been incardinated by the Archbishop.
Sources close to the Curia say the Archbishop is “wary” of ending up with a huge number of friars leaving their convents to remain as diocesan priests. That would raise his salary bill as well as ‘dump’ on him unknown quantities of men who want to get out of their convents, although friars happy with convent life say it is unfair of the Archbishop to hold all cloistered religious as frustrated men wanting to get out at their first chance.
Fr Balzan said: “It might well be that the Archbishop doesn’t want to establish a precedent, but what about my priestly vocation? What should I do now?”
Even people from the Qormi community have appealed to the Archbishop to allow Fr Balzan to resume pastoral services.
“I’m so concerned about him,” said Victoria Carina, a former doctrine teacher at the St Sebastian parish. “He was our confessor and a lot of people could click with him. Is this the way the Archbishop treats his sons? So many people are asking what happened to Fr Jesmond, why he is not allowed to say mass anymore. It’s so unfair.”
Asked how the Curia reconciled not needing the service of priests when it also says there is a problem of vocations, Charles Buttigieg said: “The Archdiocese of Malta has never said that it does not need the service of priests. The opposite is the case. At the same time, in each individual case, Church authorities have to ensure that they take everything into consideration and act according to what, in their conscience and in the light of Canon law, they honestly feel is the best interest of all the ecclesial community. Occasionally, Church authorities have to take certain difficult decisions which are painful for them as much as they might be painful to those affected.”
Buttigieg also revealed divergences between the Curia and the Vatican on Fr Balzan’s permission to leave the order.
This is because while the Curia is resorting to Canon Law which states that “if the member (of the religious institute) is a cleric, the indult (to leave the institute) is not granted until he has found a Bishop who will incardinate him in his diocese or at least receive him there on probation. If he is received on probation, he is by virtue of the law itself incardinated in the diocese after five years, unless the Bishop has rejected him.” (Can. 693). It follows that the religious is supposed to remain in his order unless he is granted the indult (from the Vatican).
On the other hand, the Augustinians’ provincial said the Vatican still allowed Fr Balzan to leave the order without Mgr Mercieca’s permission – an issue which seems to have irked the Archbishop in a battle for territory.
Fr Borg said: “The Vatican accepted Fr Jesmond’s request to leave our order and sent us its decree in two weeks’ time. Whatever Canon Law states, the Vatican ultimately decides on religious orders.”
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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