I would like to say goodbye and bon voyage to outgoing US Ambassador Douglas Kmiec, but I do not feel sorry about the negative report he received from the US State Department for his proselytising activities while serving in Malta. The last thing Malta needs is a proselytising American ambassador.

God knows that the theocracy called Malta has more than its fair 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 writing letters to The Sunday Times.

Christopher Hitchens is right when he says “religion poisons everything”.

Not only has religion contaminated all the above, but it has also led to the untimely resignation of Prof. Kmiec as US 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 Prof. Kmiec to use his post as ambassador to promote his personal religious beliefs.