Newly appointed Bishop Charles Scicluna tonight said that the percentage of Maltese people who still attend Church on Sunday has dropped to about 40%.

This, he said, marks a 10% drop on attendance recorded in 2006 in the last Church census. 

Speaking on Times Talk this evening, Mgr Scicluna said the church avoided carrying out another census was partly because of "fear of the actual figures".

"When in the last few weeks I spoke of the need to carry out another census so we can gauge exactly where we stand, I was met with reactions of panic: 'Do we need to know?'. Yes of course we do," he said.

Although he did not have official statistics in hand, he said that Church insiders informally calculated a constant decline of 1% per year.