Archbishop denies Shift News report he requested postponement of Pope’s visit

Archbishop Charles Scicluna never requested a postponement of the papal visit, the Curia said on Wednesday, denying an allegation that appeared in The Shift News.

Pope Francis was in Malta for a two-day visit in April, a week after the general election. The online news portal quoted unnamed sources saying that Scicluna wanted the visit postponed but this was overruled by Apostolic Nuncio Bishop Alessandro D’Errico.

However, a spokesperson for the archdiocese said: “Nothing could be further from the truth. The visit had the Archbishop’s full support and it is hugely disappointing that a media outlet relies on anonymous and uninformed sources to erroneously state that the Apostolic Nuncio ‘overruled’ the Archbishop.”

The curia said that protocols and procedures adopted by the archdiocese for the visit were long-established, and similar in scope and nature to those used for previous papal visits to Malta in 1990, 2001 and 2010.

The curia statement said that a reply sent to the news portal was “regrettably heavily censored”.

“The archdiocese had expressed satisfaction that both clergy and the general public, including the migrant community in Ħal Far, were enthused by the generous presence of the Holy Father among us and, more importantly, gained spiritual enrichment from this joyful experience,” the curia said.

The news report depicts D’Errico as someone with “a reputation of closeness” with the Labour government and implies that he insisted on the visit in April because it coincided with his retirement from the Vatican’s diplomatic corps.