Correspondent Revel Barker is probably the only man on Gozo to have received two Papal medals (if not, he is certainly the only non-Catholic) but even that accolade does not qualify him to pontificate about the Papacy.

I detect a certain amount of bias as he disliked the election of Pope Benedict from the start, as he made abundantly clear in his recently-published book, The Blood Secret, set in Malta, in which he suggested how the Pope might have been eventually deposed by a group of like-minded cardinals.

Like its close relative, the Da Vinci Code, it has been acclaimed as an engaging work of fiction, albeit with less unlikely coincidences, but fiction, nonetheless. My understanding of the background to the current situation is that Pope Benedict thought that, after his perfectly understandable retirement on grounds of ill health, he might become known as “emeritus Pope” and that the Vatican announced that it would be so.

The new Pope, Francis, clearly had no objection to the suggestion. Sadly for Barker, His Holiness apparently did not consider it necessary to consult Gozo’s leading commentator and author!