Fr Mark Montebello off to Mexico

Renegade Dominican friar Mark Montebello will start a new mission, only this time it will be 11,000 kilometres away in Mexico where he will be transferred for three months by mutual consent after meeting the Order’s head in Rome.

In March, Fr Montebello was summoned to Rome for a meeting with the head of the Dominican Order, Fr Carlos Aspiroz Costa, in the wake of some comments he wrote in the newspapers.

It had been reported that Archbishop Paul Cremona, a fellow Dominican, insisted the Order take action regarding Fr Montebello, following articles he wrote about divorce and paedophilia as well as the priest’s defence of Nigerian Monday Iseki, who was charged with resisting arrest.

Last year Fr Montebello was disciplined by his superior in Malta for “offending the sentiments of the Maltese” after he said he believed that Jesus was in favour of divorce and that crucifixes did not need to be “flaunted” in public buildings.

“After the meetings I had in March, something had to be done and it was either this or other things. We made the choice together,” Fr Montebello told The Times when asked whether his mission in Mexico was forced upon him.

“God closes a door and opens a hundred,” he said.

Fr Montebello will be serving in the Saltillo diocese in northern Mexico starting next week and will work directly under the wing of Dominican Archbishop Raul Vera.

The experience will serve as a moment of study and reflection, Fr Montebello said in a statement he issued to all media.

“There is a programme planned for me, which includes various experiences such as working with migrants and native people. The choice was social minded and it is absolutely different from here,” Fr Montebello said, insisting he was “deeply scandalised” by the lack of social conscience in Malta.

He was non-committal when asked whether this move to Mexico was intended to silence him.

“This will be another experience. I will not probe the issue too much, somebody else can do that. After the reports that were made about me and my meetings in Rome this is the result. Life, with all that it brings should be taken as a gift from God,” he said.