Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/236916
16 Opinion maltatoday, SUNDAY, 5 JANUARY 2014 What happens in Malta does n G uze Stagno can say what he likes: and he may even be right with regard to Brussels, where (let's face it) a lot of stuff happens that we never get to hear about. But here on our little rock in the centre of the universe, the events of the week have dramatically pointed in the opposite reaction. What happens in Malta certainly does not stay here for long. So when Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna let slip that Pope Francis was 'shocked' to discover Malta's plans to introduce same-sex adoption rights in the near future, the news took wing and dipped in and out of media houses worldwide within literally a few hours. Even I, who could easily have warned Scicluna that such news would instantly attract the attention of the world press, was Raphael Vassallo slightly surprised at the speed with which the story was picked up, and the prominence it was given. The editor of the Telegraph even questioned whether Time Magazine should revoke its choice of Francis for its 'Person of the Year' award: a choice, he reminded us, that had been fuelled in part by the same pope's earlier conciliatory remarks concerning homosexuality. Time Magazine did not revoke its award in the end; but it did report the story concerning shock and horror at the Vatican. So did the Guardian, The Independent (UK), the New York Times, The Huffington Post, The Washington Post and many more. Implicit in all such reporting was an apparent contradiction between Pope Francis's private comments to Bishop Scicluna, and his public statements on the same subject earlier this year. I for one sincerely doubt whether this contradiction even exists… certainly there has been no evidence of any actual softening of the Church's stand on homosexuality (or indeed anything else) since the resignation of Pope Benedict last March. But I'll leave you to judge for yourselves. The important part is that, rightly or wrongly, it was actually Bishop Scicluna's revelations that 'shocked' some people out there in the wider world. Not everyone, I'll grant you… but the tone of the media reporting suggests that Pope Francis's statements to Scicluna did indeed raise a few eyebrows among people who had previously viewed him as a reformist who was about to embark on a spectacular transfiguration of the Catholic Church. And this impression can only have been greatly reinforced by graphic reminders coming from Argentina's LGBT community – also in response to the same story – that the same Jose Bergolio had similarly waged a fierce war on gay marriage when still Bishop of Buenos Aires (i.e., just a few years ago). Many of Pope Francis' admirers in and out of the Church may have been entirely unaware that he had previously described gay marriage as "the devil's plot to disrupt God's plan". Well, thanks to Mgr Scicluna's comments, their attention may have now been drawn to this fact… and I have no doubt that while many of the more conservative Catholics would welcome the revelation, others would have received it with greater 'shock' than anything experienced by Pope Francis himself. Something therefore tells me that Bishop Scicluna may have unwittingly dented the smiling pope's carefully cultivated image as the man who would finally dust out the remaining cobwebs from the Vatican's millennial corridors… and maybe that's not such a bad thing, as at least it dispels all such fanciful notions for the wishful thinking they really are. But what I find truly interesting is not so much what all this tells us about the Vatican under Pope Francis; but what it tells us about our own country in the 21st century: in particular, how some of its citizens still believe that the rest of the world is actually quite irrelevant to our local goingson. So irrelevant, in fact, that one of our Bishops felt he could Many of Pope Francis' fans may be unaware that he had previously described gay marriage as "the devil's plot to disrupt God's plan"