“With reference to your email to Archbishop Scicluna on his Twitter account activity, please be informed that the like was done inadvertently and has since been removed,” he said.

Scicluna has often spoken out in favour of LGBT+ rights and is often seen as a relatively socially liberal figure within the Catholic Church. However, when questioned by the National Catholic Register about this ‘like’, a spokesperson for Scicluna said it was done by mistake.

Malta’s Archbishop Charles Scicluna has ‘unliked’ a photo of the New York LGBT pride parade after Catholic media outlets called him out on it.

Charlie Joughin, the American LGBT+ activist who published the photo, tweeted the National Catholic Register’s report with the comment: “I mean it was a cute pic”.

I mean it was a cute pic. https://t.co/jZjq4HTUOo — Charlie Joughin (@CharlesJoughin) July 3, 2019

The report did the rounds among Catholic media outlets, with the website Church Militant quoting Maltese Catholic activist Philip Beattie as casting doubt on the Archbishop’s excuse.

“If — as the Maltese Curia alleges — the tweet ‘like’ was done inadvertently, then naturally His Excellency Mons. Scicluna should not be faulted,” Beattie said. “I do, however, find it difficult to swallow that one makes such mistakes.”

Scicluna, the adjunct secretary of the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, raised eyebrows at a recent summit of bishops when he said that both homosexuality and heterosexuality are “human conditions that we recognize, and that exist, but they aren’t something that really predisposes to sin”.

In March, he was invited to Xarabank but sent Fr Kevin Schembri in his stead. During the show, Schembri said that God created homosexuals that way and don’t need to change, a comment that shocked several socially conservative Catholics.