(MALTA)
Lovin Malta
March 12, 2021
By Tim Diacono
[VIDEO]
Maltese priest Rob Galea delivered an impassioned homily in Australia last Sunday, condemning the sexual abuse that has gripped the Church and apologising on behalf of them.
Galea was giving an online sermon about the Cleansing of the Temple, the time Jesus angrily drove merchants out of the Temple, and interpreting it as the wrath of Christ upon discovering that a place of refuge had become a place of exploitation.
Here, he proceeded to draw parallels with the Church, and the several sexual abuse cases that have plagued it over the years.
“It breaks my heart; I became a priest to give hope and dignity to people and the Church exploited the vulnerable,” he said.
“I know it will do everything to protect the vulnerable now, but we didn’t, and as a result many souls were lost and that’s an eternal ramification, and I dont know what to say.”
“However, I’m sorry for the priests who did that because I know that Jesus would have overthrown them and brought his whip out. Instead, we took advantage, and even as someone who became a priest to love others, I’m sorry for what other priests have done and how the Church hid the abuse.”
“Jesus’ heart breaks and is aggressively angry at those who take advantage of the vulnerable. Our responsibility now is to bring about healing and love of God; I pray that the Church will fall back to their knees, come back to the stillness of God, and make the temple a place of worship.”
Malta was hit with its own clergy sex scandal recently when two Gozitan priests, Joseph Cini and Joseph Sultana, were charged with raping and abusing a young boy.
Gozo’s Bishop Anton Teuma recently asked for forgiveness from the many people who have suffered some sort of abuse, physical or sexual, from members of the clergy.