Around ten militant Christians convened in Valletta this evening to ask God for forgiveness ahead of tomorrow’s Malta Pride festival.

Wearing suits and sashes pinned with the Maltese eight-pointed cross, the Christian activists erected a statute of the Madonna outside Parliament and held up a banner which declared their intent to safeguard Malta’s “calling as a Catholic country” against what they claimed was a threat posed by LGBT people to life, natural marriage and the family.

The prayer protest was organised by ‘Pro Malta Christiana’, a group which describes itself as a lay Catholics who follow the path of Plinio Correo de Oliviera – a late Brazilian Catholic activist who had described homosexuality as “the number one enemy of the family”.

The group’s Facebook page is led by Philip Beattie, who used to be secretary-general of the now-defunct ‘National Action’ political party.

The Church has publicly disassociated itself from this group and its activities.

In a statement, the Christian group recounted how the late Pope John Paul II had in 2000 decried a large celebration of homosexuality in Rome as an offence to the Church’s Year of Jubilee.

“The Pope had said that homosexual acts go against natural law and that the Church cannot remain silent or it would fail in its mission to distinguish between right and wrong,” they said.

The group also urged people to respect their right to freedom of religion, warning that some of its members had recently come under fire from LGBT+ activists and “extreme leftists”.

What do you make of this rally?

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Tim Diacono

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]