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	Loving Their Neighbour in Silence By Lino Spiteri Times of Malta September 12, 2011 http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110912/opinion/Loving-their-neighbour-in-silence.384352 This has not been a very good year for the Church in Malta. It received a particularly bad press on a number of issues and its response very often made things worse for it, not to mention the occasional individual foray at levels, from Bishop, to priest and lay people, who simply added fuel to the fire. The child abuse cases have been a carry-forward item for a number of years. Possibly emboldened by gruesome revelations in another large Catholic community, Ireland, victims of clerical abuse in Malta and ill-treatment by nuns in Gozo began speaking out. The Church responded but not to the satisfaction of many whose appetite for justice and retribution had been whetted. The fact that Curia investigations seemed to be without end, at times for valid reasons that were not made known to the public, made matters worse. The papal visit to Malta acted as a spur, with the Pope meeting abuse victims, setting a higher plane for appropriate action. Earlier this year the issue took a turn that was bound to set public opinion aflame, with a court verdict of guilty in a couple of well-followed cases. The fact that the court’s decisions are under appeal did not make a difference to the public conclusion that evil abuse had taken place, as alleged by the now grown up victims. The matter was taken as almost closed to the extent that the Curia, probably anticipating fresh criticism of further apparent procrastination, entered into discussions about compensation to the victims. I continue to fear that aspects of the affair will touch on the sordid. Money should pay for necessary treatment. I do not feel it can or should be used to mitigate moral damage. On a parallel front, the Church went through the debacle of its position in the context of the promotion of divorce legislation. It did not restrict itself to its proper role, that of emphasising to Catholics, in a context of a loving mother and teacher, that, even if they divorced, that legality did not nullify the sanctity of the Catholic marriage tie, which is not thereby undone. The Church went on to involve itself in the purely civil side of the issue to the extent that it financed, to the tune of ˆ180,000, the sickly campaign of the No movement. In the process, it disallowed the lawyer president of the Yes movement from further involvement in Curia marriage nullity cases. The fact that, weeks after the House of Representatives approved the divorce legislation, the Archbishop phoned the lawyer to tell her she had been reinstated simply showed the error of removing her in the first place and also confirmed that there was no moral aspect to the first punishing decision. It also revealed signs of divided views within the Curia. Against this background, a report in The Sunday Times yesterday about The Prison Sisters came as a balancing relief to demonstrate that the broad Church still does a lot of good social work in Malta, aside from its religious function. The Sisters of Charity, who operate in 27 countries, have about 80 mostly aging nuns in Malta, including a number who follow the example of the late Sister Enrichetta Alfieri, an Italian who spent most of her life working with inmates at Milan’s San Vittore prison. (She was declared Blessed on April 2 by Pope Benedict.) The Maltese nuns spend time working with inmates at Corradino Correction Facility on a volunteer basis. They do that about four times a week. In the process, they might influence inmates religiously. They organise prayer meetings in prison and the report on The Sunday Times tells of how that changed the life of an inmate who was won over to the teachings of the Bible, started to organise prayer groups himself and left prison a changed man. They also assist prisoners with personal problems, at times serving as a link with their families to solve problems in the outside world. All this activity is unsung. The Sisters of Charity do it as their way of serving God and mysterious humanity. They are not alone. Clerics and nuns do a lot of work in our society that goes unrecognised and, perhaps, unappreciated except by those who benefit from it. It should remain that way for do not let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. But society should be aware of it, especially the media, which is right to carry occasional reports revealing more of the positive work carried by Church elements who love their neighbours as themselves without shouting it from the rooftops.
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