MALTA
Malta Today
Matthew Vella
There’s fire in the portly Charles Scicluna, the auxiliary bishop whose diminutive stature belies not just his independence of mind, but the fact that he had been the Vatican’s chief prosecutor on the sexual abuse cases that rocked the Catholic Church ever since 2002. For years he stood by the side of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, when the latter headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – the successor to the Roman and Universal Inquisition – and in its modern incarnation, Scicluna served as a latter-day Bernardo Gui, an enforcer for the Roman pontiff and a hunter of sinners.
When Benedict XVI announced Scicluna’s appointment to auxiliary bishop, it was believed that a man who had done his job well on the Vatican’s hard-line stance against sex abuse was being punished through a “face-saving promote and remove” tactic. But as Scicluna himself said before leaving Rome, “if you want to silence someone, you don’t make him a bishop”. And silenced, he won’t be, having blogged and tweeted his views on, most recently, gay marriage and the sale of citizenship.
“Why are you so vocal – why are you entering the fray in this manner?” I tell him as we end our interview at the Curia in Floriana. “Because Charles Scicluna’s in town, and that’s who I am,” he responds, very matter-of-factly.
Canadian-born, the 54-year-old had to relinquish his citizenship under a Labour government in the late 1970s because Malta did not yet accept dual nationality. You can understand why the sale of citizenship under the IIP, approved in the House yesterday by a new Labour government, is a sore point for Scicluna. “Apart from the fact that a Bishop will always remain a citizen and will always enjoy the right to express himself as a normal citizen, given that he has also a say in democratic society, the Church cannot shy away from giving input with respect on issues that concern the common good. I have a great respect for citizenship, which is my bond to my homeland and to my country, and I feel that when you put a price on such a bond you are not necessarily doing citizenship and what it means the best of services.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.