The money collected from golden passports is no longer dirty for the Church; but that collected by Adrian Delia for charity was!

Blog post from a political observer.

I was surprised that the Church boasted that she is going to light up the façade of the Mosta church thanks to Government funding. It is laudable that Government helps the dioceses of Malta and Gozo improve buildings like churches that are also a tourist attraction. However, I am surprised that we have an Archbishop who has now ended up accepting money on which there is a claim that it is dirty money.

Newsbook informs us that a new external system of lighting is going to be installed on the façade of the Basilica Sanctuary of Santa Maria in Mosta. This is going to cost 850,000 Euro and is going to be funded from the sale of passports and it is this that is most troubling. Has the archbishop stopped talking about the rule of law? When did Newsbook and the archbishop declare that the money brought by Adrian Delia over Christmas in aid of a much loved specialized care home, was dirty money?  It now seems that the money from the sale of passports is no longer dirty. The archbishop had no problem accepting it because the sale of passports is no longer breaking the rule of law. Where is the chancellor of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal who protests with Repubblika and is one with Manuel Delia? So now the sale of passports is no longer a bad thing?

With this move, the archbishop has forfeited any opportunity – in the future – to speak on the rule of law since he has accepted money earned from the sale of passports. He knows, and knows well enough, that the passports being sold in our country are being purchased by dubious individuals. This sale was also criticized by an international agency. And it was also criticised by Repubblika together with the chancellor of the Maltese Church Tribunal.  

I trust that one will not come out with the excuse that this is the façade of the church and not the church itself. This excuse does not hold because the façade is also part of the church. Had the Parliamentary Secretary gone to Mosta to boast about what was going to happen and that the money was from Malta’s coffer it would have been acceptable but that so many thousands are going to be spent that derive from a sale and a project that is held responsible for tainting the Maltese and the Gozitans good reputation is not. I do not find it is correct of the Church to accept. The least the Church in Malta can do is to adhere to what she preaches.

The Church is an institution that should be above all this and has to uphold what she preaches. If this is the only money available it would be better were she to remain empty-handed instead of blackening her hands with that list of names, that according to some organizations that are backed by the church, are making a profit from dirty money. It is useless trying to tell us that this church is priceless and thousands of foreigners visit it. This is not an acceptable argument to sufficiently convince us to allow the Church to get mixed up with this type of purchase that for many Maltese is considered not an honest one.

In truth, it is the acceptance of this money that highlights just how much it was a political move when the Church or, better still, the Archbishop did not accept the money brought by Adrian Delia for charity. On that occasion, the Church said it was not going to accept this money because the provenance could be from doubtful sources! Yet by accepting this money for the Mosta church only goes to show that Archbishop Scicluna did not accept the money brought by Adrian Delia not because it could have been dirty money but because the Archbishop is in cahoots with the clique that wanted perforce to ruin Adrian Delia. The truth always comes out .