By now, many have heard of the case about Marsaxlokk’s parish priest, Luke Seguna, who misappropriated up to 500,000 in donations to the Church on porn sites, sex-shows, vehicles and holidays. In terms of Christian sin, Luke Seguna was a weak man who couldn’t control himself and used money that was supposedly meant to the Church for his own, extravagant pleasures.
The case of Luke Seguna is one of aggravated petty crime, but it also reflects a culture of power wielded by the clergy in the last remnants of uneducated society. In fact, when Luke Seguna was prosecuted in court, his parishioners sympathised with him, and many believed he did nothing wrong by misappropriating all those funds. I may upload these messages published on social media later on after I find them. Ironically, it was Labour Party supporters who mostly applauded him.
I say ironically, because it is this kind of power and impunity that allowed the clergy to wage a war against the Labour Party in the 1960s – a war which affected the political structures and changed society for the years to come. It was the decade when one of the perquisites for social change was the erosion of the clergy’s influence on the population. Back then the parish priest held significant power in the community in all its spheres of life, religious, spiritual, economic, psychological, sexual, cultural and more. Apart from needing a reference from your parish priest to have a job, he controlled the dynamic of your relationships in your town or village. He also regulated your bedroom, female sexuality, and most of he times could commit sexual crimes with impunity.
This great power and influence by the clergy was also wielded to expropriate poor and uneducated people of their only assets and resources, and many used to donate whatever they had to the parish priest or the Archbishop in exchange for indulgences and trips to Heaven. Dom Mintoff himself used to explain, in a very efficient pedagogical way, that the Maltese folk didn’t need to give everything to the Church in order for them to go to Heaven.
I find Luke Seguna’s case interesting in this context, particularly in how the power dynamics of the clergy have been eroded but have remained a shadow of what they used to be. Instead of power brokers, the crimes of the clergy have been reduced to personal indulgences.
Equally, I find resourceful parish priests who have significant wealth as interesting cases. As a rich person, it takes a lot of religious and moral conviction to chose a life of chastity and religion. Inversely, a parish priest who finds the time to make investments and generate wealth would probably need a lot of greed as motivation to part with his time that is dedicated to religious values. This is why I find the case of Reverend Carmelo Busutill interesting, given that he is not just investing his retirement savings. He’s building a large complex of 14 apartments, 10 garages and three shops in Mqabba. Impressive, I would say. His architect is someone called Mannie Galea.
Karm Busuttil, as he is known was the parish priest of ?urrieq for many years, and today is the parish priest in Birgu (Vittoriosa). The people who know him in ?urrieq tell me that he has been involved in property investments for some time now and some online court documents even show that he was once chased for debt of up to 200,000 he had with some landlords. If I understood the case correctly, subsequently he had acquired or sold a number of properties in relation to his case.
The case is interesting for someone who is a parish priest, as unless he had a generous inheritance, the source of his wealth would make for an interesting case study.
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