I’d like to say goodbye and bon voyage to outgoing US Ambassador Douglas Mr Kmiec, but I don’t feel sorry about the negative report that he received from the US Office of Inspector General for his proselytising activities while serving as US ambassador to Malta. The last thing Malta needs is a proselytising American ambassador.

God knows that the theocracy called Malta has more than its share of proselytisers. In addition to bishops and priests preaching relentlessly from pulpits, on radio and television, and in newspapers, Malta has a do-gooder President, a proselytising former President, a sanctimonious Prime Minister, moralising MPs, sermonising newspaper columnists, and militant Catholic reactionaries in the letters section of Malta’s newspapers.

Christopher Hitchens is right when he says that “religion poisons everything”. Not only has religion contaminated all the above, but it has also led to the untimely resignation of Mr Kmiec as American ambassador to Malta.

If the next American ambassador to Malta is a Muslim, it would be undiplomatic of him to use his post as ambassador to promote Islam, just as it was wrong for Mr Kmiec to use his post as ambassador to promote his personal religious beliefs.

John Guillaumier

ST JULIAN’S