The Curia said this evening that Archbishop Mgr Charles Scicluna never threatened Fr Mark Montebello with defrocking and neither has he stopped from writing his thoughts.

Following a report in it-Torca, a spokesman for the Curia told The Malta Independent that "the Archbishop did not censure Fr Mark Montebello and that the Curia is not informed about what has been reported in It-Torca with regards to Fr Mark".

It-Torca this morning reported that Fr Mark Montebello was told he would be defrocked if he didn't follow orders from the Church to stop writing and expressing his views, following comments he made which criticised the Church's strategy against the government's proposed amendments to the IVF law.

It-Torca reported that the Dominican friar's Sunday column in the Maltese language newspaper, for which he has been writing since 1993, was missing from today's edition after the Church threatened to automatically deprive him of his ecclesiastical status if he disobeyed its orders.

In a column penned for the Times of Malta late last April, Montebello had let known his views that the Church was "strategically depositing itself in its opposition to the proposed amendments".

"Each and every time, repeatedly, the campaign strategy of the Church ended up giving the impression that it stood against minority rights. This time around, we are already witnessing the soaring of hysterics, the simplistic arguments, the scare tactics, the crusading, the apocalyptic scenarios and the banal catchphrases," he had written.

Montebello, who is known for his outspoken views, had also told Labour's TV station ONE that the Church was deploying itself against the interest of the minority when it came to its opposition to the IVF law changes.