'Culture of silence' hinders child protection in Malta, Vatican report says

Fighting the “culture of silence” around child abuse and the “resistance to safeguarding” by religious communities were listed among the challenges faced by the Church’s Safeguarding Commission, a report revealed.

Other challenges included the vetting of foreigners employed to work with children, as their criminal records were not available.

The annual on church policies and procedures for safeguarding, issued by the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors applauded the Maltese Church’s overall approach to safeguarding.

It then went on to list the challenges and make recommendations.

A strong commitment to justice

The Commission noted that in Malta there has been “strong and admirable leadership in safeguarding, by the Archbishop of Malta and the Bishop of Gozo, that showed a strong commitment to justice.”

It observed that the safeguarding process was victim-centred and that there was a strong commitment of finances and resources toward maintaining a robust safeguarding commission that emphasised the professionalisation of safeguarding in the local Church.

While the two dioceses had their own structures, they worked together and collaborated closely with civil authorities, including the police, the Child Protection Directorate, and other relevant agencies.

The Commission also commended the Church’s whistleblowing policy and the publication of guidelines, which were updated in 2024 to introduce protection from online abuse for the first time.

The Commission noted that there were various structures in place to ensure mandatory training for anyone who works with minors, including laypeople. It also noted that the Archdiocese of Malta is renovating a dedicated space to serve as a safeguarding “drop-in centre.”

Resistance, taboo and other challenges

The Commission went on to outline the challenges faced in the safeguarding field by the Church, noting that bishops expressed concern about criminal record checks of workers and pastoral agents arriving from abroad.

“Currently, Church authorities are only able to conduct background checks of people since they started living in Malta. Church authorities do not currently have a way of producing a background check from the country of origin,” the report noted.

Another challenge was the vetting of all Church personnel due to the large number of people involved. Ensuring that Church volunteers- amounting to thousands - abide by the new 2024 safeguarding guidelines is an ongoing task.

Other challenges included "cultural taboos and the culture of silence, especially on small islands where communities are very insular".

The report noted that the Maltese bishops expressed concern about resistance to safeguarding, especially among religious communities.

“The bishops report that for cases occurring within a religious order, the religious superior sometimes requests that the ordinary forgo dealing with the case through the Interdiocesan Safeguarding Commission and that it be dealt with instead through the local religious superior or directly with the order’s generalate in Rome,” the report said.

There was also a lack of an external audit system. However, this was due to the absence of safeguarding structures and experience outside of the Church in Malta, making it difficult to identify qualified individuals to conduct an external audit.

No national safeguarding guidelines

In Malta, there are no national safeguarding guidelines in place to protect children involved in sports or other extracurricular programmes. While legal consequences exist for adults who abuse or harm children, there is a lack of preventive structures designed to keep children safe from the outset.

The Church has its own Safeguarding Commission, but this only covers Church-run entities. 

The Commission report noted that, according to the Committee on the Rights of the Child’s periodic review of Malta, last reviewed in 2019, there were 47 reported cases of sexual abuse in 2016, 28 in 2015, 21 in 2014, and 15 in 2013.

In 2021, the Directorate for Child Protection Services received a total of 3,024 reports of child abuse, of which 175 were cases of child sexual abuse.

In its annual report for 2023, the Church’s Safeguarding Commission said that of the 26 cases it concluded that year, it had substantiated eight claims of abuse, four of which involved minors.

Of those four substantiated cases involving minors, two were complaints of sexual abuse by diocesan priests.