The bishops yesterday said if their statement about the Nadur carnival helped to put consciousness on this issue to the fore it would have achieved its purpose.

It is the first reaction from the Church hierarchy since a number of individuals were charged with wearing improper religious attire at the Nadur carnival.

The Sunday Times asked the bishops to respond to claims that their statement verged on the extreme and whether they agreed with the one sentence handed down by the court so far. But rather than address the questions directly, a spokesman for Archbishop Paul Cremona preferred to go into why the bishops felt the need to issue the statement in the first place.

"We want to express our regret concerning those who took part in these happenings. We pray that they understand better and respect both the Christian values and also the civil values of our people. Hopefully this plea will bear fruit. The Church is concerned about values in the individual persons themselves."

The bishops' statement also appealed to the authorities who are meant to safeguard also the common good. This seems sometimes to be forgotten or taken for granted.

"The bishops tried to bring to the forefront this reality. This should not need a bishops' statement. Thank God, the police said they had acted before the bishops' statement, which was published (10 days) after the events happened."

In a democratic state, all its members can call on the authorities to protect some value which they strongly believe in. It happens all the time with important values like environmental and immigration issues, they said.

It is not a question of tolerance - otherwise even these groups would be called intolerant, but of believing strongly in a value and wishing to protect it by all the means available.

There are many ways that the authorities can get involved, like education and prevention. It is up to the authorities to select the method to use, hopefully leading to a change in the persons involved, and in the upholding of those values, they added.

"Is it an added value to our society to have commonly accepted ethical standards protected, like other values, by the State, as it has been up to now? Or should we leave these values at the mercy of individuals who would want to deride them?" the bishops said.

Meanwhile, the police maintained that they had taken action against a number of individuals at the Nadur carnival before the bishops' appeal. "The police certainly did not wait until the public statement issued by the bishops of Malta and Gozo to initiate any action which by law they were bound to take once they had detected the costume infringements."

The police said offenders who were noticed by the police at the time were approached and had their particulars taken on the spot. Criminal charges were also drawn up and issued on the same day.

The police said that investigations continued in the following days where more people, who were not noticed by police officers to be breaking the law, were also interviewed and charged.