Hardly.

If you think everyone who becomes a priest does so for ‘moral’ reasons, you’re very wrong. That may be the case now, when there are so many more opportunities and career options and life is so very different, but it certainly wasn’t back then.

Sometimes, becoming a priest was just a meal ticket or the only way to get status.

You focus on ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ when you should be focusing on the first bit: “I DON’T KNOW.”

If my sisters were drug-dealers, operators of Ponzi schemes, people who cheated old ladies out of their life savings, corrupt politicians and smugglers, rest assured that I would have broken off all contact with them a long time ago and certainly wouldn’t be behaving as though this kind of behaviour is normal or acceptable, travelling with them and meeting for lunch.

You point to the root of the problem in Maltese society: accepting everyone and everything because it is the “sin and not the sinner”.

And I am not interested in whether priests are defrocked or not, because I am not a church-goer.

I am talking about something else entirely: that man is wrong for the school’s image and he is a bad example to children because of what he represents.

Had my children still been at that school, I would have had to explain to them that the spiritual director’s brother is a drug-smuggler and crook, and that his other brother is a very corrupt ex politician and disgraced European Commissioner who is now under suspicion of having run a Ponzi scheme.

Gorg Dalli is free to be a priest as long as his bishop will have him, but the school should know better than to appoint somebody so closely associated to a drug-smuggler and a corrupt politician.

Maybe they picked him because his social background, politics and mentality reflect the dominant current trend among parents of children at that school nowadays? I’m beginning to think so.

The children who were there 15 years ago would have had nothing in common with Gorg Dalli and he nothing with them. So as to take ‘spiritual direction’ from somebody, you first have to be on the same level.

And I’m going to be blunt here: if John and Bastjan Dalli are the products of their upbringing, which they most certainly are, then Gorg Dalli is too. He didn’t become a criminal, but when you read his interview, you will see that he has exactly the same mentality as his brothers.

He’s not averse to commercialising his priesthood, either – what do you think all those ‘giti’ to the fjords are.

Malta is packed with priests. It’s not as though there is such a major shortage of them that San Anton School has to pick the one priest whose two brothers are a notorious drug-smuggler and an internationally scandalous disgraced European Commissioner who is widely perceived (with good reason) to have been one of Malta’s most corrupt politicians ever.

Also, San Anton School is meant to be an independent school, not a Roman Catholic school, so why it would have a spiritual director nowadays is anybody’s guess.

There is no way on earth I would approve of anyone’s children confessing their sins to somebody who has two criminals for brothers. He should sort them out first.

http://dungorgdalli.info/?page_id=4

His description of their childhood gives us a lot of insight into why his brothers are the way they are, particularly John’s pathological obsession with acquiring money by whatever means, far in excess of what he actually use:

http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2007/12/23/interview.html

In that same interview, I am fascinated to see that he speaks exactly like his brother John when describing John’s ‘sufferings’ by a ‘hidden hand’.

Twisted.