MALTA SENSATION.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18205, 5 March 1929, Page 9

MALTA SENSATION.

LORD STRICKLAND’S POSITION. (United Prats Association—By Else Iris Telegraph—Copyright.) MALTA, March 2. The Rome newspaper, “Corner© d’ltalia” states definitely that Lord Strickland has been excommunicated for conduct hostile to the Church and ecclesiastical institutions. His excommunication does not need to be publicly and formally announced. Lord Strickland denies reports that lie has been excommunicated. Sir Augustus Bartolo. Minister for Migration, defining the respective spheres of civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, made it clear to the Senate that nothing would sidetrack the Government I'iom protecting a British subject from banishment from British territory and his own country, under the pretext of religious discipline. Reuter reports that public opinion is strongly behind the Government. Father Garta, the Italian superior of a Franciscan monastery in Malta, ordered Padre Mioallef, one of Lord Strickland’s prominent partisans, to leave Malta, upon which Micallef appealed to l ord Strickland, who countermanded the order, on the ground that an Italian subject had no right to deport a British Maltese. Father Garta reported the incident to the \ atican and .‘Micallef was excommunicated. A pastoral issued by the Archbishop of Malta caused Maltese Catholics to ask if Lord Strickland himself was automatically excommunicated. Lord Strickland, who is Count della Catena in Malta, as Sir Gerald Strickland was governor of Tasmania, Western Australia and New South Wales successively in the years from 1904 to 1917. He was Conservative member for the Lancaster division in the House of Commons from 1924 to 1928, and becoming head of the Ministry in Malta in 1927, was in the unusual position o* being a member of two Parliaments at once. This caused some adverse comment, hut when he was raised to the peerage last rear he ceased to he a member of the House of Commons.