He was forced to choose between two loyalties and as a priest he chose to obey the Church but the decision was not bereft of pain for Fr Anġ Seychell.

Having been ordained a priest in 1956, Fr Seychell was faced with a stark choice five years later when Mgr Gonzi interdicted the Labour Party’s executive committee members and later imposed mortal sin on those who voted for the party.

“I had always felt close to the workers’ movement but I chose to stay loyal to the Church. It wasn’t an easy choice and one that caused me a lot of pain,” Fr Seychell says.

Fr Seychell will turn 78 next month and looking back at those events he acknowledges the difficulty of his choice and insists that he tried as much as possible to avoid doing harm to the workers’ movement.

“I tried to minimise the number of cases where I could not give absolution to parishioners who came for confession. The cases were very few,” he says.

Fr Seychell’s dilemma was shared by many Labourites, who could not understand why the Church they loved acted the way it did in their regard. It was a period that caused a lot of harm, Fr Seychell adds, as people were unfairly put in a situation of having to choose between the party they supported and the Church they were baptised in. “Labourites who chose to continue supporting the party felt as if the Church had rejected them and this led to a grudge that was carried for a long time.”

Fr Seychell says the Church had a crusader mentality at the time and came out guns blazing against the Labour Party. However, he is also confident that black period will never return.

“Vatican Council II, which came after the interdiction, gave us the tools to find a way out of the impasse.

“The Church learned from those mistakes.”