Cardinal Grech is Malta’s second ever cardinal, and this is his first visit to Malta since his Episcopal ordination last February. He is 86 years old and has been living in Rome since 1946.
During an informal press conference with journalists at the Archbishop’s Curia yesterday, the theologian described his life as a cardinal, saying that like the other cardinals who are over 80, he has no office at the Holy See and cannot vote in an eventual conclave to an elect a Pope.
He said that following the 18 February ceremony, when he was officially appointed cardinal, he received hundreds of letters of congratulations, which he answered with the help of a fellow priest.
After that, he returned to his work – studying, doing research and lecturing. He also travels occasionally, but he said his work is mainly related to his role as bishop and Augustinian.
Last February he had said he hoped his life would go back to normal once the consistory was over.
Asked about the main challenges the Church currently faces, the cardinal said: “I agree with Ratzinger’s (Pope Benedict) insistence on the lack of a scale of values against which to measure good and bad, and to distinguish between right and wrong.”
He referred to the Catholic Year of Faith (2013), which the Pope described last January as a means of “restoring God’s presence in this world, and giving man access to the faith, enabling him to entrust himself to the God who, in Jesus Christ, loved us to the end”.
Pope Benedict had said: “We are facing a profound crisis of faith, a loss of a religious sense which represents one of the greatest challenges for the Church today.”
Asked about young people’s relationship with the Church, Cardinal Grech referred to marriage and the lack of understanding of the underlying importance of getting married in the Catholic Church.
Many Church marriages are just a show, he said, and few seem to think about the sacrament, which lives with couples in their home. The Church offers the sacrament as a means of building a strong marriage, said the cardinal.
He said the Church is duty-bound to explain its teachings. In the case of the divorce referendum, he said referenda don’t really count as far as the Church is concerned.
The Church is duty-bound to talk about the social consequences, such as the negative effects of divorce on children, and the same applies to other subjects such as gay marriage and IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
Recently (and coincidentally the day before the government presented the Bill on IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies), the bishops of Malta and Gozo published a pastoral letter called ‘Celebrating Human Life’, in which they re-stated the position of the Catholic Church that IVF – the process by which an egg is fertilised by sperm outside the body – goes against human dignity.
The method, the bishops said, requires the creation of embryos. Even if some are not killed deliberately, but die naturally after being created, “the fact remains that several embryos are being sacrificed and instrumentalised to create a baby”.
The bishops said they understand the wish of married couples to have children, and the hardships of couples facing the difficulty of infertility.
Human life is not some product which can be worked, planned, used or set aside.
If this fundamental respect is ignored, the bishops said, science becomes the enemy of man.