The way the Mark Foley affair was diverted onto a sexual experience he went through when he was 12, with a 32-year-old priest from Gozo, is disgusting. A diversion was expected. Less so was the way some members of the local media joined in the sensational mode of foreign media representatives who rushed to Gozo as if Ulysses and Calypso were frolicking there live all over again.

Until recently Mr Foley was a US Republican Congressman. He was a political lightweight and a deaf official ear was turned to whispers that he might not be totally fit to remain on the House commission on exploited children. The whispers turned into a roar when it was revealed that Congressman Foley liked to send lurid e-mails and text messages to House page boys, teenagers cutting their teeth in the top American political court.

Mr Foley resigned. His superiors in the Republican-dominated Congress feared they too would end up in the soup for ignoring the whispers about his follies. The Gozo diversion was created. Mr Foley's lawyer declared his client was alcoholic, gay and had been fondled by a priest in his early teens. Parts of the media seemed to accept the conclusion that the ex-Congressman was alcoholic and gay because of the clergyman who had once fondled him. They set off in pursuit of the priest.

Behaviour and emotions draw from a deep and mysterious well. I did not come across any expert opinion on why Mr Foley is what he is. At a time when the Catholic Church, in the US and elsewhere, including Malta, is being reviled because of revelations that a few of its clergyman were paedophiles, the charge against the Gozitan clergyman became big news.

The priest is now 72 years old and no longer living in West Palm Beach, Florida where the close contact with the boy Foley took place. He admitted to the international media there was something to Mr Foley's allegations. He denied "penetration" but hazily recalled an improper friendship. Expert opinions were expressed in his regard - it was suggested that he was in a state of denial.

Whatever had actually taken place in the distant past, the Church was embarrassed by the American furore raised now. The Bishop of Gozo undertook to investigate. Although he was no longer living there and was ailing in Gozo, the Archbishop of Miami formally barred the priest from all Church work as he investigated Mr Foley's allegation that the Gozitan clergyman had molested him as a child.

Members of the international media and part of ours parked themselves outside the priest's house in Gozo. The public trial began, without care or consideration for a basic fact. The incident, unacceptable and reprehensible even if it was within the limit admitted by the priest, occurred 40 years ago. The man in the priest had fallen, shaming his calling. Only he knows whether he was burdened with a feeling of guilt and, if he was, what it meant to him.

He may have confessed his misdemeanour and found solace in God's forgiveness. He may have tried to atone with subsequent good living and example. Christians are entitled, if not obliged, to believe in that possibility. To hope that forgiveness remains integral to their Faith as it should be to all of humanity. The media is not in the business of forgiveness. Foreign journalists and cameramen will do their best to satisfy their readers' and viewers' avid curiosity. Deliberately or not, they will be a party to the ongoing effort to mitigate Mr Foley's follies by burrowing into the juicier folly of a man of the cloth whose duty it was to lead by example.

The local media and public opinion might consider whether it should really be a part of that. Whether one should ever forget that Christianity is also about the fall in each one of us and not casting first or last stones...