A group of high profile priests will today issue a common position on divorce, insisting that any decision on the matter should be taken according to the individual’s own conscience, The Times has learnt.

The group includes Fr Joe Borg, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott and the Church’s Pro-Vicar, Mgr Anton Gouder, who only two months ago was embroiled in controversy after linking divorce with sin.

The common position will not endorse divorce. However, the priests will argue the importance that individuals form their conscience in the light of Church teachings and the common good before deciding on divorce according to conscience.

The paper is a personal initiative of the priests even though some of them occupy prominent roles within the Church hierarchy.

According to sources, the position paper has the tacit approval of the Archbishop who had mentioned the initiative during a meeting of the Diocesan Assembly.

The priests started working on the initiative before the most recent controversy sparked by the Church’s Judicial Vicar, Mgr Arthur Said Pullicino, who threatened judges presiding over divorce cases and anybody who helped introduce divorce with grave sin.

Mgr Said Pullicino’s words were interpreted by various members of the clergy as a challenge to the Curia’s official position as dictated by the bishops in a pastoral letter issued in August, who avoided the use of the word sin.

In a two-and-a-half-page letter, the bishops had asked for everybody to contribute to the divorce debate and not distort Christ’s love by embarking on some kind of crusade.

The pastoral letter was the Church’s most detailed opinion on divorce and it came in the wake of statements by Mgr Gouder who had said anybody voting for divorce was committing a sin.