“While we express our sympathy with the victims, we feel the need to repent for the sins of those who committed these abuses. We suffer humiliation in knowing that these have been committed by those who, in the name of the Church, had the task of educating and protecting the young. It is a time of humiliation for the whole Church”. This is a passage from the message “of pain and repentance” that the archbishop of Malta, mgr. Paul Cremona, and the bishop of Gozo, mgr. Mario Grech, published today on the island that Benedict XVI is expected to visit on April 17th and 18th on the occasion of the 1950th anniversary of Saint Paul’s shipwreck. The two prelates, joining in with the spirit of the Pope’s letter to the Catholics of Ireland, express in the name of the whole Maltese Church “pain and repentance for the victims of the abuse, for the Christians who have been shocked by it, and for Maltese society as a whole”, but at the same time they recall that the Church of Malta has been “one of the first to adopt to take concrete measures” to tackle the abuse.

“In 1999 – the letter states –, a committee known as Response Team was established under the chairmanship of a retired judge to investigate the charges of sexual abuse committed by members of the clergy, religious people and pastoral workers against children as well as adults. To investigate such cases as quickly as possible – the bishops recall –, another committee was set up a few months later”. Now, in the light of the Pope’s letter, “the Maltese Church keeps working hard against the abuses and asks all Christians to cooperate with the authorities concerned, including the civil authorities. We repeat what we stated in 1999: Christians have a duty to cooperate with the Church rather than hide the facts or stay silent, so that this wound may be healed once and for all”. “Despite the case being a source of humiliation for the Church, the Church must continue the mission entrusted to it by God in the interest of humanity”. “We embrace – conclude mgr. Cremona and mgr. Grech – this moment of humiliation and pain as an invitation to join the mission of the Church with our human abilities, in the awareness that they depend on the power of the Holy Spirit”.

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