I refer to Charles Buttigieg’s letter ‘Memoirs of Archbishop Mercieca’ (The Sunday Times of Malta, November 9), in which he replied to my letter the week before.

Buttigieg seemed irritated by my reply following his letter published in another section of the press. Readers of this newspaper, however, have a right to correct and full information.

Buttigieg did not think twice to reopen a wound better forgotten and left to heal with time by mentioning the withdrawal of a mandate given to Arthur Barbaro-Sant in July 1988. The Benedictine community in Mdina is an autonomous order and as such, had every right to appoint whoever they wanted, to promote the beatification cause of Sr Adeodata Pisani.

It was also their right to withdraw the mandate in case the choice proved wrong. Through a letter dated June 3, 1997 (nine years later), Abbess Giustina Bonello withdrew Mr Barbaro-Sant’s mandate. But, as she personally told me, she did this with a heavy heart and on the Archbishop’s instructions who dictated the letter on the phone, which she signed together with the secretary.

The cause of the withdrawal of the mandate was the setting up of the Fundazzjoni Adeodata Pisani – a subject accepted by the nuns but never discussed with Archbishop Mercieca. It was Bishop Annetto Depasquale who informed us that the Archbishop was not in favour of more foundations.

Some months passed and from a poster of Times of Malta hanging outside a stationer’s shop we got to know that the Archbishop instituted a civil case against the foundation. This came as a terrible shock to us, especially to my husband who had been working hard on the cause for nine long years.

Quoting from Fr Joe Borg’s article in The Sunday Times of Malta (November 9 “Scicluna (Bishop Charles) rightly expressed his anger at the fact that he only became aware of the criminal case from the newspapers”, made me realise that ours was not an isolated case.

It was not my intention to enter into certain details regarding the whole process leading to the beatification of Adeodata Pisani as I have thoroughly covered this in a book which I published recently.

I presented a copy of my book to Archbishop Mercieca as I wanted him to know first hand what I wrote about the whole issue. To date, three years later, nobody contested a single phrase of the contents.