Malta – where even monks think that corruption is normal

Last April, this website broke the news that a large supermarket and office complex was to be built in what is now the garden of the Carmelite Priory in Balluta Bay, Sliema.

In July, the Archbishop applied for a court injunction to stop the Carmelite Order from proceeding with the agreement it had reached with a construction company.

The court granted the injunction on the basis that the Archbishop’s Curia is an interested party.

Though it looks like the Archbishop is in a tussle with the Carmelite Order, the opposite is true. The Carmelite Order and its new prior want to be released from the agreement with the construction company. It was signed by the former prior, in 2011, and grants the priory grounds to the construction company on leasehold for 50 years, for development into a supermarket complex.

The agreement was, effectively, one between two brothers. The prior of the Carmelite Order was, at the time, Anthony Cilia and the construction company is owned by his brother, John Cilia.

The Archbishop and the new prior argue, correctly, that the private agreement violates the conditions against which the then-owners of the land donated it to the Roman-Catholic Church in 1890: that it be used solely as a convent.