Split admiration for the episcopal conference seems to be aligning effectively along partisan lines.
The Archbishop of Malta’s Charles Scicluna’s authoritative moral guidance during the crisis of the weeks since the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia is being loudly criticised by Labour trolls, led by Labour grandees who have opened fire on one of their favourite old targets, the curia.
Here’s current Gozo Channel Chairman and former Labour party chief financial officer, forced to resign when he was embroiled in the 2013 oil scandal, Joe Cordina, writing on Facebook.
Not sure how to translate “żatat” with accuracy. Maybe some of you experts can suggest the right word. But in any case it does mean that the Archbishop, according to Joe Cordina, is speaking out of turn and stepping out of his limits. “Mingħalih smart imma ċuċ mill-kbar”. That I can translate. He thinks he’s smart but is a model idiot. ‘Perhaps he wants to imitate (Archbishop Michael) Gonzi”.
The chilling effect mobilised again on civil society for daring to speak up outside a hymn book written for it by the political class. That has worked on previous bishops but Archbishop Scicluna is made of sterner stuff.
It is not surprising for Joe Cordina to hiss at genuine mourners for Daphne Caruana Galizia. He surely is not likely to be one of them.
In 2013 she wrote about his odd appointment by the new Labour government to the chairmanship of a state company when a few weeks before he had been forced to resign in a scandal. He can’t have liked that. The corrupt are never too keen on anti-corruption journalists.
In this Facebook post, Joe Cordina is reacting to someone telling him she thinks Bishop Mario Grech’s ambivalent attitude to the ongoing crisis is “wiser” than Archbishop Sciculan’s leadership. One would expect she means Bishop Grech’s chilling silence is more beneficial to the sinister interests of the regime in Castille.