From Prof. J. A. Muscat

It would be a great injustice to the recently retired Archbishop Mercieca to let pass remarks made by Daphne Caruana Galizia on his episcopate in her last contribution (TMIS, 28 January).

It may be natural for your columnist to be abusive and uncharitable; it is her journalistic style. It is, however, not good journalism to distort the past and to be outspoken in one’s prejudice.

The fact that Archbishop Mercieca was brought up in a small village in Gozo has nothing to do with the relevance and worth of his episcopate, nor can his leadership of the Church in Malta for the last 30 years be simply rubbished as an anachronism, an significant phase in our Church history.

Archbishop Mercieca stands out as a self-effacing pastor who led the Church of Malta out of the jungle and imbrogli of Church-State interference of the Gonzi era into the open and defined fields of competence that belong to the Church and to the State and this he did with the minimal amount of fuss and turbulence.

No better evidence exists for this than the way the Church in Malta behaved in the long and acrimonious debate on whether Malta should join the European Union.

To this may be added his tireless championing of the traditional Christian and Maltese model of the family with all the social (apart from the spiritual) advantages that flow from it.

He did this with great courage, quite conscious he was bucking the modern, liberal trend, yet with all the humility and respect for the person as befits a true Christian.

J. A. Muscat

TA’XBIEX