Pope Benedict has proved he is able to dominate a news agenda for days. Whenever he makes a comment on contraception, the world press are ready to go for his throat and cling on till they extract every drop of blood. Whenever he makes a comment about sexual abuse involving the clergy, opinion columns and blogs are saturated to such an extent that in the eyes of many the exception becomes the rule. When he speaks out on human rights, however, the same media quote a couple of lines and then move on to the next subject.
Last Sunday the Pope decided to risk upsetting popular sentiment in the country where the seat of the Catholic Church is located and call on Italians to respect the rights of immigrants. He said: "An immigrant is a human being, different only in where he comes from, his culture and tradition. He is a person to respect and with rights and responsibilities, and should be respected particularly in the working world where there is a temptation to exploit."
Not a man to waste words, in two short sentences the Pope summed up what every person who professes to be a Christian, particularly Catholic, should believe, uphold and practise.
The Pontiff could not have chosen a more opportune occasion to make such a statement. In the preceding days, violence erupted in the southern Italian town of Rosario in Calabria after African migrant farm workers protested against their inhumane working conditions. Controlled by the ruthless mafia, they are paid peanuts - if they get paid at all - and are treated much worse than monkeys for doing jobs that Italian nationals do not want.
Rather than make an attempt to protect the migrants, Italian home affairs minister Roberto Maroni rubbed salt into their wounds. He sought to exploit populist nationalist sentiment by saying that the country had tolerated immigration for far too long and this had fuelled criminal activity. The Pope reminded him in a less than indirect manner that it is actually the other way round.
Yet how many Church-going Maltese are able to put hand on heart and say they would adopt the same stance as the spiritual leader of the Church if similar incidents, for similar reasons, had to happen in Malta? Probably as many as those who are voicing concern at the moment that the rights of immigrants are being downtrodden because they are not being permitted - thanks to Mr Maroni's intervention - to leave what was long their country of departure, Libya.
At 1,397, Malta last year experienced the lowest number of immigrant landings since it joined the EU in 2004. Yet we are all so caught up in the pursuit of our selfish objectives that hardly anyone is stopping to ask why. Not even Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who, unlike his counterpart in the Labour Party, has battled populist opinion bravely in the past - mirroring the Pope's words - to remind the Maltese of the rights of migrants and the potential consequences to humanity of ignoring those rights.
Yes, attempts should be made to make the illegal immigration problem go away. But this must be done, as the Prime Minister did say to ambassadors accredited to Malta last Friday, through a twin strategy based on respect for international laws and the application of burden sharing. Preventing a person who has a genuine case for obtaining either humanitarian or refugee status from leaving Libya does not fall into that category.
Perhaps the Pope can make that point when he visits Malta in April.