Cana Movement founder Mgr Charles Vella says the introduction of divorce does not scare him provided that marriages are built "on rock and not on sand".

In an interview with The Sunday Times, the 81-year-old priest says: "My theory is that while divorce from the Catholic viewpoint is considered a menace to the stability of marriage it does not mean that it's going to wreck marriages."

Mgr Vella counsels against staging a "crusade" against divorce, and says that instead the Church should focus squarely on better preparing couples for a healthy marriage.

The Milan-based priest says that as a founder of the Cana Movement, the Church organisation which prepares couples for marriage, he would not like to see the introduction of divorce.

But as a priest, and as a human being, he cannot close his eyes like "the three wise monkeys" who don't want to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

Mgr Vella warns against holding a referendum on issues like divorce or abortion and also calls for an end to what he describes as the "twinning" between the Maltese Church and the State.

He also insists that the Church should avoid quoting certain statistics - as some leading Churchmen have done - in a bid to water down the number of marriage breakdowns.