In an article published by The Guardian newspaper on Tuesday April 5, 2005, writer Stephen Moss quoted anthropologist at the University of Malta Mark-Anthony Falzon saying, "Malta has always prided itself on being more Catholic than the Pope."

According to historian of the Inquisition in Malta and former curator of the Inquisitor's Palace museum in Vittoriosa Carmel Cassar, Catholicism originated in societies where everything was based on the production of food and practically all the people were peasants. He said, "the Catholic church bases itself on agrarian values."

Cassar was quoted as saying, "If the inquisitor was working today, he would commit suicide." He also stated, "The church is propagating values which do not cater for industrial society. Its values are passé'. The church is concerned about this, but it doesn't want to recognise that things have changed and that you have to adapt yourself to new circumstances."

In the same article it was also reported, "rebel priests are even rarer than self-confessed atheists." The writer mentions the episode when Maltese Dominican monk Fr Mark Montabello was arrested after protesting against property development in the Kalkara valley. However, being a priest Fr Montabello was released.

About Pope John Paul II, <i>The Guardian</i> reported Fr Montabello as saying, "He was elected as a liberal pope and that lasted until about 1981. But after the assassination attempt, more power was given to the curia. I lived in Rome and I know that he never fully recovered from that shooting. He had to delegate more power and the people who were sidelined after the death of John Paul I came to the fore again."

In Malta more marriages are breaking up, the family is in decline, crime is rising, corruption too. Divorce is not permitted, but informal separations are common. In the confessional, some priests turn a blind eye to the use of contraceptives: the dam has been breached; the damned are in the majority, according to the same article. It continues, however, not everyone believes the cause is lost. Father Joseph Bonnici, who oversees the work of diocesan priests in Malta insists, "the church has a prophetic mission to reinforce certain values, we need to be near the people and to feel their pain, but we should not say that divorce is right."

At the time of the Pope's visit in 2001, Fr Bonnici talked of a "crisis of faith" in Malta. Executive director of the Institute for Research on the Signs of the Times Father Joe Inguanez, uses the same phrase.

Fr Inguanez said, "Several European countries have passed through this experience and now they are in what they themselves call the post-Christian era. I wouldn't say we have reached that point yet, but we are moving in that direction. I think the church hierarchy is aware of it - they would be stupid not to see it and I know they are not stupid - but they don't talk about it. They wouldn't like to say that we are a secular society, but we are a secular society."

The writer reported that "Malta is claustrophobic: too built up; each settlement running into the next; all those people with the same surnames - Cassars, Gonzis, Falzons, Vellas. It is a provincial town masquerading as a country."