Word: mintoffs
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...played a weighty role in the island's affairs (present population: 330,000, of whom 98% are Catholic). But in recent times, as last week's elections again demonstrated, the church's influence has been challenged sharply by the Maltese Labor Party and its leader, Dom Mintoff, a Rhodes scholar who once studied for the priesthood...
Mortal Sin. As Prime Minister from 1955 till 1958, Mintoff advocated policies that Malta's Archbishop, Sir Michael Gonzi, feared would limit the church's control over education, religion and family life. Gonzi protested the importation of badly needed teachers because many were non-Maltese Catholics ("They are born and bred in a Protestant atmosphere, and can never become perfect Catholics...
...When Mintoff tried to boost tourism in order to help the economy, hurt by cutbacks at the British naval base, the Archbishop squelched a proposal to build a gambling casino and censured bikinis as immodest. Finally, left-leaning Mintoff threatened to seek economic aid from neutralist Egypt or Communist Yugoslavia. For "grave offenses against ecclesiastical authorities," the Archbishop put the Labor Party's entire leadership under interdict (denying them confession, communion or consecrated burial), made it a mortal sin for a Catholic to support the Socialists...
...quickly than it often thinks wise. But Britain turned back the clock last week on the island of Malta, site of the Royal Navy's main base in the Mediterranean. Unable to satisfy the voracious demands of the island's unpredictable, Oxford-educated former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff (who last year wanted to incorporate Malta into Britain itself, but now talks about making it a neutral port guaranteed by the U.N. Security Council), and unwilling to grant independence to the rock-bound island that must import nine times as much as it exports, the British suspended...
British Jib. Mintoff had won his point, but his tactics had aroused cold hostility in British officialdom. From the start, Britain had jibbed at Mintoff's costly economic conditions for integration. In a 1,000-word cable Lennox-Boyd bluntly warned the Maltese leader that he had "recklessly hazarded" the whole integration plan. Snapped the London Economist, hitherto a cautious partisan of integration: "Let Mr. Mintoff be left in no doubt that he is demanding from Britain too high a price for something that Britain does not much want...