Archbishop Paul Cremona yesterday hailed the meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the men alleging sexual abuse by members of the clergy, saying this showed how prepared His Holiness was to listen.
"I was very happy the Pope chose to give these men time to listen to them. This... brings out the human aspect of this Pope who wants to listen to people's sufferings," Mgr Cremona told The Times yesterday.
Mgr Cremona added that when the alleged victims organised a press conference asking to meet him and the Pope, he had immediately accepted, although their request for an encounter with the Pope was out of his power.
He described them both as "very sorrowful encounters".
One of the alleged victims said the Pope had wept when he met them on Sunday in individual encounters at the Apostolic Nunciature in Rabat right after the papal Mass.
The Archbishop said: "There was much cordiality and it was a moving moment for us all, including for the Pope, who met the men individually, listened to them and prayed with them."
Addressing a press conference on the papal visit, Mgr Cremona said the journey was successful and that the real protagonist was not the Pope but the people of Malta, who took to the streets to give a warm welcome to the head of the Catholic Church.
When he was being transported around in the Popemobile, Pope Benedict often remarked about the large crowds lining the streets to welcome him. The Pope, said the Archbishop, was extremely satisfied with the visit.
The next step was for the Church and the faithful in Malta to think about the messages that he had delivered during his 27-hour visit here.
They spoke of Christian values, the dignity of every person, marriage stability and the love of life from conception. These were guidelines for the Church in its message to the people.
Speaking about the future, he said the Church had to face up to the challenges of secularisation. Even the clergy and lay people were finding it hard to accept this reality and were sometimes shocked they were being contradicted or faced with something new that they were not used to before.
He said the Church had to go back to its roots when it had no institutions and was just based on people and their beliefs.
Fr Charles Tabone, the Archbishop's delegate for social communication, said he was confident the thousands of people who attended wherever the Pope was "went there for the song, not the singer".
In the same vein, Gozo Bishop Mario Grech said God had spoken through the thousands who attended wherever His Holiness went.
"People came to the events and lined the streets because God had spoken to them. This is a manifestation that God is alive in each and every person who was there," he said.
Asked to comment about a speech by Paul Caruana Turner, who was representing the marginalised, Mgr Cremona said the Church loved everybody but it also had a message. The Church was offering a way of life and being a Catholic meant joining in this way of life. Otherwise, the Church loved everybody, he said.