Following this week’s shocking revelations from Ireland, it is high time that the Maltese Church similarly comes clean on its own record of child abuse.

Ireland, one of Malta’s fellow ultra-Catholic countries, this week lifted the lid on decades of sexual abuse suffered by children at the hands of the clergy, revelations that revolted the Emerald Isle and sent yet more clergy abuse shockwaves much further afield.

When Dublin’s archbishop handed over more than 60,000 previously secret church files to an investigation into clergy child abuse, he condemned his four predecessors for the way in which they presided over what was endemic child abuse at the hands of those who were meant to have been trusted unquestioned and completely.

He deplored the blind eye his predecessors turned to decades of abuse and charged that they must have understood that the rape of boys and girls “was a crime in both civil and canon law. For some reason or another they felt they could deal with all this in little worlds of their own.”

“They were wrong,” he said, “and children were left to suffer.”

Deplorable, despicable, dastardly – no words could possibly convey the sickening revulsion felt when contemplating the horrible fate that so many children across the world, with Malta being no exception by any stretch of the imagination, have suffered.

In a recent interview with the Associated Press reported by this newspaper, Malta’s own Monsignor Charles Scicluna, who serves as the Vatican’s prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles cases of priestly sex abuse, revealed how the Holy See has changed its position on priests who force children to perform sexual acts.

In the wake of a recent series of accusations against Italian priests, Monsignor Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem that needed to be rooted out, signalling a shift in the Vatican’s stance on the subject.

This year in Italy, another ultra-Catholic EU state, dozens of former students at a Church-run institute for the deaf went public with claims that they were forced to perform sexual acts with priests.

Referring to the heinous acts, Mons. Scicluna did not mince his words when he said: “I do not think it is a question of if it is happening. It has always happened. It is important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing that the Church can offer to people who need it – both the victims and perpetrators. There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive.“

A culture of silence surrounds priestly abuse in Italy, Ireland, Malta and other staunchly Catholic countries. But now, right in the Vatican’s backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly taking hold. The same can be said of Ireland and should be said of Malta.

The numbers in Italy are, however, a mere drop in the ocean compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to AP’s count, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or €1.1 billion due to victims in Ireland.

The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the US and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care. The deaf students’ speech impairments, for example, made the priests’ admonition “never to tell” all the more easy to enforce.

The Irish abuse came at the hands of 19 orders of nuns, priests and brothers across Irish schools, workhouses and orphanages.

How many children and those who are now adults have fallen victim to members of the clergy that have committed such travesties against humanity and who have ruined so many lives before those children even had a sporting chance in life? And what would be the cost of such settlements to the Maltese Church?

What this all brings us to is the message delivered yesterday by the Archbishop of Malta and the Bishop of Gozo in their Pastoral Letter for Advent.

“We are at an important stage in our local Church,” they told the faithful. “We have been brought up and lived in a culture full of Catholic signs. Today’s reality is very different. Our culture doesn’t reflect Faith and Christ’s teachings anymore. In order to live this Faith, one has to first seek it in his heart and find it there through his choice of following Jesus. Only then we can call ourselves ‘Christians’ in today’s culture.

“The Church community has to be witnessed by the actions of its members and not by words or registers of Baptism. Jesus is clear: they have to recognise us by our actions.”

Yes, the Church community, and the Church itself it must be added, will be recognised by its actions, or its lack thereof. If the Church is to begin bringing the alienated members of its flock back home, it absolutely must first of all confront its own demons – come clean with the public.

Then and only then will it redeem itself in the eyes of so many that have wandered away from the Church.

Any such admission would, of course, initially prove costly to the Church, and not just in monetary terms. The gains of coming clean and facing up to the long-festering problem, however, could work wonders for Church attendance figures, which have been on a steady decline.

In Malta we cry for the heads, or perhaps other anatomical features, of paedophiles and child abusers, but when it comes to the clergy, we seem to be content to let the Church deal with the problem in its own way, which is to bury the accusations, the evidence and the Church’s own findings.

It is high time the clergy comes clean on its sins, whatever the cost.