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As regards the religious priest who served in the Diocese of Portsmouth, on 3 May 2002 the Archbishop’s Curia of Malta issued the following statement:
With reference to certain media reports concerning the Archdiocese of Malta and a Maltese priest’s permanence in the Diocese of Portsmouth, the Media Office of the Archdiocese of Malta would like to clarify the following:
1 The priest concerned has never been incardinated in the Archdiocese of Malta and so was never under the authority of the Archbishop of Malta.
2 The moment the Archbishop of Malta came to know that the priest concerned was suspected of child abuse, the Archbishop withdrew all faculties for him to serve in the Archdiocese.
3 The priest concerned did not inform the Archbishop of Malta when he decided to leave Malta and go abroad. Nor did the priest ever inform the Archbishop of his whereabouts abroad.
4 In April 2001, the Archbishop of Malta and the Bishop of Portsmouth were both attending a meeting of European bishops in Strasbourg. In the course of casual conversation about problems posed by alleged child sexual abuse which bishops have to face, the Archbishop of Malta mentioned that the Response Team was conducting a preliminary investigation. During the conversation the name of a Maltese priest was mentioned and the two bishops realised that the priest being investigated in Malta was at that time serving in the Diocese of Portsmouth. That was the first time that the Archbishop of Malta came to know that the priest concerned was serving in the Portsmouth diocese. He immediately offered the Bishop of Portsmouth all possible assistance regarding this case.
5 On 5 February 2002, the Bishop of Portsmouth sent a letter to the Archbishop of Malta asking whether the investigations in Malta regarding the priest concerned had been concluded and seeking to be informed about their revelations.
6 On 11 March 2002 the Archbishop of Malta officially informed the Bishop of Portsmouth about the conclusions of the Response Team with regard to the case of the priest concerned.
As regards the religious priest who used to serve in Canada, in October 2003 the Archbishop’s Curia declared as follows:
There has been an occasion when the Curia’s Secretariat for the Clergy came to know that a religious priest who had previously been accused of child abuse in another country was serving as a spiritual director at a particular girls’ school. Exchanges followed between the Secretariat and the religious superior of the religious priest concerned, whose religious order had investigated his case. The kind of information that was made available to the Curia Secretariat at that stage regarding the alleged child abuse was (a) that the religious priest concerned had always strongly denied the allegation against him by one person; (b) according to investigations carried out by the religious order the evidence available did not show a probability that the alleged abuse did take place.
The Archbishop and the Curia categorically deny any insinuation that the religious priest concerned was “handpicked” by them when he started serving in the school concerned.
Charles Buttigieg
PRO, Archbishop’s Curia
Floriana
Editorial Note:
We accept these version of the facts. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
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