The Archbishop yesterday admitted that some members of the Church “may have exaggerated” in their manner of teaching in the run-up to the divorce referendum but rejected the accusations of a crusade.
He urged people to look at the heart of the bishops’ pastoral letters: “If you find a crusade out to harm others, I’d be ready to specifically ask forgiveness for it,” Archbishop Paul Cremona told station programme manager Tonio Bonello during an interview on RTK radio, the Church station.
The Church, he said, could not have remained silent in the divorce debate, as it had the duty to spread Christ’s teaching wherever it was. Just because it spoke out, it did not mean it was on a “crusade”, which he defined as harming others to spread a message, as happened during the Crusades in the Middle Ages.
The Archbishop also criticised those who said Malta was a theo-cracy, saying that if that were the case, then people could not openly criticise or satirise the Church, as indeed happened in Malta.
Speaking on the bishops’ embargoed statement released on Saturday, which generated a lot of controversy, the Archbishop said the main message, that the country had to invest in the family, had been overlooked.
The apology contained in the statement was a bid for reconciliation. “Reconciliation cannot start if someone doesn’t even admit he might have hurt someone. Even if I said something which wasn’t intended to hurt but you were hurt, I still have to ask forgiveness, but we also did it the other way round,” the Archbishop said, explaining the spirit behind the apology.
Asked by Mr Bonello whether he thought the message was manipulated, Mgr Cremona replied “yes, a lot”. He said some sections of the media had attacked protagonists of the campaign and not published the whole picture.
“The media has to present the thought in its entirety and let people judge whether it’s right or wrong,” Mgr Cremona said. He concluded, however, by saying that the introduction of divorce could be an opportunity for believers to be a witness to society.