These few words cannot fully express what our family feels after the generosity shown by our friends who offered sympathy, solace and support at the sad loss of my husband Lino. There were so many people at the funeral Mass - doctors, patients, members of the clergy, relatives, friends - it was a fantastic send-off. I wonder how everyone managed to find a parking space... maybe my St Anthony or John Paul II helped them!

Lino is not easily forgotten. I spent a lifetime with him because we were very young when we met. He always was an avid pro-lifer, respecting life from the moment of conception to the very end and admiring doctors who allowed people to die with dignity.

Way back in 1960, while working at Harton Lane Hospital in South Shields, he was out on an emergency: a single mother aged 21 was dying of eclampsia (high blood pressure). She had not had any ante-natal care, hiding her pregnancy and she was admitted as an emergency case. He went... and she died. But Lino could still feel foetal movements so he performed a caesarean section on the dead mother and produced a tiny baby girl weighing 1.1 kg, a child of six months' gestation.

She was immediately placed in an incubator and she survived. Then in the Seventies, while Lino was working here in Malta, a Maltese patient approached him, and showed him an article from an English newspaper about people who were born just before their mother died. Among them was a girl from South Shields who had a wish - to meet the Dr German from Malta to whom she owed her life.

To cut a long story short, we eventually found this girl in l977 just by inserting a short letter in the Shields Gazette and we kept in touch with her ever since.

In August this year this girl, now a woman aged 45, surprised my husband by coming to Malta for a week to introduce her family to us. Lino was touched by her gesture and he appreciated her choice of holiday from her usual Lanzarote, specifically for the family to meet him.

He wished her to have something special to remember him by, so he chose a very sweet Maltese filigree cross and chain and while entertaining the family he presented her with it. Was this 'God-incidence' that it was her last meeting with him?

When I sent her an e-mail to tell her that Lino had passed away so suddenly she was shocked and her 15-year-old daughter hugged her and reminded her that had it not been for Dr German she would not have her to love... He had given her life and she gave life to two children.

Another 'God-incidence' was the anthem Lino wrote to St Andrew while he was whiling away his time as a young doctor at St Vincent de Paul Hospital. A man from Luqa saw him strumming the guitar and asked him to put words to the anthem.

Lino died on St Andrew's day. Our son's second name is Andrew, born in 1960 and named after Prince Andrew. His sister's son is also called Andrew, but unbelievably the special baby from South Shields named her son Andrew as well. So the family is assured that this great Apostle has taken Lino to His Lord and Master. God rest his soul. He is in a better place.

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