A correspondent from Australia recently criticised the social level of the Maltese clergy – meaning that they lead an extravagant type of life. Nothing is further from the truth.

I have been living abroad for the last 30 years or so, and I can say the following.

Forty years back I was chairman of a commission that studied and proposed a new salary scheme for priests. The level we then proposed for the vice-parish priests was that of a primary school teacher, with a reasonable percentage increase for the parish priests and other categories. Things must have changed during the years but I believe that the basic principles were preserved.

As the economy of the island improved, so did the standard of the average Maltese worker. Suffice to say that emigration decreased with the passing of time till it stopped completely.

As the conditions of the Maltese worker improved, so did, I presume, the style of life of the priests. Nothing is wrong with that. The majority of the Maltese people would also agree.

Your correspondent criticised tourism (of the clergy). If I am not mistaken, I once read in this paper that in the first four months of a particular year 40 per cent of the Maltese population had already travelled once.

The Maltese priest is a hard-working priest – as are the Maltese workers.

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