Maltese Church authorities yesterday issued a clarification of the statistics it released last week, after a foreign website speculated that Malta "“ contrary to popular perception both locally and abroad "“ may have a higher-than-average percentage of Catholic priests accused of child abuse.

Last week, the Archbishop's Curia released statistics compiled over 11 years of investigations by the Response Team, set up in 1999 specifically to investigate allegations of child abuse by members of the clergy.

According to this report, the Response Team had investigated a total of 45 priests and members of religious orders in connection with over 80 allegations of sexual molestation of minors. Of these, only three have since faced criminal proceedings in court - after the alleged victims, dissatisfied with the work of the Response Team, referred the matter to the police.
The statistics released by the Curia lost no time finding their way onto the Richard Dawkins Foundation's online forum "“ a social networking website for atheists and secular humanists, founded by the well-known author of The God Delusion "“ where one anonymous user extrapolated a percentage for Malta's rate of child abuse by the clergy as a whole.
Going on the figures supplied by the last nationwide census (carried out in 2004), this amateur statistician concluded that the 45 investigated priests represented 6% of the Malta's total of 7,326 priests present in Malta.

And yet, the Vatican's Maltese promoter of justice at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Mgr Charles Scicluna, claimed that 'between 1% and 5%' of clergymen worldwide had been investigated over child abuse allegations.