Archbishop Paul Cremona said today that the decision by the European Court of Human Rights to ban crucifixes was a new form of censorship.
"We have come to a situation where you can express yourself on everything, except religion," Mgr Cremona said on the PBS programme Bongu.
He said everyone should enjoy the right to show his faith through images.
Indeed, the current issue was not one between religions, but the consequence of a European ideology which wanted to remove all expression of religion, whatever that religion was.
The church, he said, had long declared that all faiths should be free to express themselves.
He never felt irritated when he saw women wearing the Burka, he said. What was offensive was that some people wanted to ban all expressions of faith and, in this case, also an expression of a nation's culture.
What if one did not like ghana (folk singing). Would one ban ghana, which was an element of culture?
The majority should have a right to express its beliefs and the minority too should not be denied its rights. But what freedom was it to ban everything? This was a new form of censorship.
Mgr Cremona said that should such a ban ever be imposed to Malta and he needed to go to hospital, he would be the first to take a crucifix with him.
COURT DECISION
The European Court of Human Rights (the court of the Council of Europe not the EU's European Court of Justice) in its ruling yesterday (Tuesday) said that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classrooms, sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.
"This is an abhorrent ruling," said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals.
"It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history," he said.
The court ruling, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls, a common sight that is part of every Italian's life, could disturb children who were not Christians.
Italy has been in the throes of national debate on how to deal with a growing population of immigrants, mostly Muslims, and the court sentence is likely to become another battle cry for the centre-right government's policy to restrict newcomers.
The Vatican spokesman said he would not comment until he knew more about the ruling but Italy's powerful bishops' conference said the ruling "evokes sadness and bewilderment".
Members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government bristled, weighing in with words such as "shameful", "offensive", "absurd," "unacceptable," and "pagan".