Watch: ‘I'm not disobedient, I'm determined,’ says banned priest

Ex-Franciscan friar Fr Adrijanu Cachia was dismissed from the order and banned from exercising the priestly ministry in public over insubordination in 2016. Two weeks after he sparked controversy when he walked onto an altar in Għargħur, he tells Mark Laurence Zammit why he believes he did nothing wrong. Fr Adrijanu Cachia insists the punishment imposed on him by the Franciscan Order and the Church is unfair and insists he will wear his robe again in public. The former friar is banned from exercising Mass in public, and he found himself in hot water when he attended Mass at the Għargħur parish church last month. He wore his priestly robes and sat on one of the front benches, and just as parish priest Christopher Galea was about to start giving communion, Fr Cachia walked up the steps and joined to receive communion himself from the altar. The parish priest stopped the Mass and walked off in protest. “I don’t know why he reacted that way,” Fr Cachia says. “We could have argued over it after Mass was over, but not at the altar... there was a lot of commotion.” In response to the incident, Fr Galea had told Times of Malta, “I knew he was banned by the Curia because we all know...