Letters | Sunday, 04 April 2010

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Priest not appointed to girls school

Reference is made to the feature entitled ‘Let the children come to me…’ by Mr Raphael Vassallo (MaltaToday, 26 March 2010).
Without prejudice to other considerations and/or reservations regarding the different points raised, it is necessary to clarify as follows:
The article itself and an item entitled ‘Sacred Scandals’ refer to the case of a priest belonging to a Religious Order who was abroad and had child abuse allegations filed against him, adding that upon his return to Malta “incredibly, the Maltese Archbishop posts him as spiritual director” of a girls school.
It is indeed unfortunate and disappointing that MaltaToday once again carried such a false allegation in spite of the Archbishop’s Curia’s clarification published by this same newspaper on 19 November 2006, which was accompanied by an editorial note wherein the editor declared that he accepted the version of the facts as provided by the Curia and apologised for any inconvenience caused.
For the record, it should be re-stated that the facts regarding this allegation are as follows:
There had been an occasion when the Curia’ Secretariat for the Clergy came to know that the priest belonging to a Religious Order 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 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 priest concerned had always denied the allegations made by one person against him; (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.
This is the correct version of the facts which we are asking to be published with the same prominence of Mr Raphael Vassallo’s article.

Fr Charles Tabone OP
Archbishop’s Delegate for Social Communications

Raphael Vassallo writes:

My article last Sunday made no reference to any girls’ school whatsoever. This detail appeared only in a separate fact-file, which was lifted straight from earlier articles. It seems the Archbishop’s Delegate for Social Communications has seized on this mistake to divert attention from the main claims of the article: i.e, that the Curia had ignored an international arrest warrant for Fr Godwin Scerri, issued by the Canadian police in connection with child abuse charges, when appointing him as spiritual director of a home for orphaned boys. Furthermore Fr Tabone ignores totally the main point of the article, which is that Pope Benedict XVI (when still Cardinal) had known about, but failed to act upon, a widespread culture of omerta’ with regard to child abuse by the clergy.

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