Allow me to express my views regarding Martin Scicluna’s comments in his letter entitled ‘Legally obliged to sign the Bill’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, April 13). In his response to Fr Joe Borg’s article (The Sunday Times of Malta, April 6), Scicluna emphatically states: “No President’s conscience can ever be allowed to intrude in the performance of his constitutional role”. I beg to differ.

There are circumstances where the supremacy of conscience takes over, especially in the moral realm. The Magisterium teaches that “a well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political programme or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals” and “Society and the State must not force a person to act against his conscience or prevent him from acting in conformity with it”, (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church).

However true it is that President Emeritus George Abela has his own personal conscience, one cannot deny the fact that decisions taken as a President are taken in the interests of the common good. The President, representing all the Maltese, was aware that even though civil unions were included in both main parties’ electoral manifestos, it was never clearly stated that such unions would be at par with marriage and that gays would be allowed to adopt children.

Moreover, surveys show that the majority of the Maltese are against adoption by homosexuals and equating civil unions with marriage.

All these factors must have been considered in the interest of the common good of our society when Abela decided not to sign the Bill on civil unions. However large the government’s parliamentary majority, this is not a licence to have absolute power or to legislate against moral laws, which, after all, are supreme and binding.