A Maltese priest who spent two-and-a-half-years in a special community near Trento after plea bargaining to abusing children some years ago, was later sent to a parish in Malta where he spent some time before returning to Italy.

Fr Felix Cini plea bargained in 2004 to abusing 17 youngsters between 10 and 14 years of age, while he was in Comunità Siloe in Sasso d’Ombrone in the commune of Cinigiano near Grosseto. The proper Italian legal term used is ‘patteggiamento’ – in other words he accepted the sentence to shorten the trial. Later he said that he was advised to do so, even though he felt he was innocent and that it was a case of mistaken identity. He claimed that unnamed ‘political pressure’ was brought to bear upon him to make him take this legal way. His claim was met with rather widespread scepticism.

During the investigation, all 17 youngsters, accompanied by their parents, testified to “undue attention” received from the priest. Two computers were also taken from him and police investigators claimed they found traces of porno-paedophile webpages having been accessed.

He was also the priest mentioned by Don di Noto in the TV programme Anno Zero which re-broadcast the BBC inquiry on paedophile priests in Italy.

Following his term in the Trento community, he reportedly came back to Malta but late last year he returned to Italy and was sent as an assistant priest to the parish of Cercemaggiore in the diocese of Campobasso to help an elderly and sick priest.

According to Italian media reports over the past days, the people of this small community in Molise, a southern Italian region, were outraged to find out through the internet, and through a local paper, about the murky past of the new priest in their parish.

The defender of children’s rights, Nunzia Lattanzio, wrote an open letter to the archbishop of Campobasso-Bojano, Giancarlo Bregantini, chiding him for allowing a priest with such a past to mingle with children and young people in the parish.

Some of the people were aghast that such a priest had been foisted on them without them receiving any warning, but others objected to the protest. They claimed that, in the months he has been in the new parish, he has succeeded in attracting more and more young people to the church. A candlelight protest was held, attended by many people, and 3,000 signed a petition asking the bishop to let him remain there. It was also claimed that, ever since he came to Cercemaggiore, his behaviour had been “impeccable”.

On Friday, Archbishop Bregantini announced that the priest was being sent elsewhere, thus closing the issue, at least in his diocese.

The name of the parish in which he served in Malta was not revealed. Consequently, it is impossible to know if the people in the parish in Malta were ever warned about the danger the priest posed, or of his past conviction. But in all probability they were not, especially since, in a small community such as a Maltese parish, these things usually have a way of coming out into the open.

The report also quotes Massimiliano Frassi, president of Associazione Prometeo, who, in his book Predatori di Bambini, asks who would trust his money to a bank whose director had been convicted of fraud.

In the same way, one can understand the anger felt by mothers who would not want to entrust their children to someone who has defrauded other children of their innocence.