As a child, Blessed Gorg Preca experienced a number of mystical visions he recounted to his close collaborators later in life.
Interviewed by a commission looking into the priest's canonisation cause, members of the MUSEUM, the Christian doctrine society he had set up 100 years ago said they often heard him recount an episode that took place when his family still lived in Valletta.
During that period, the young Gorg once saw a handsome young man who grabbed his hand and gave him a watch. Until the end of his life, he was convinced that the mysterious young man was St Michael the Archangel.
According to the testimonies, Dun Gorg often asked his relatives if they recalled the incident, but they had no recollection of it. The episode, however, seems to have stayed in his mind throughout his life, to the extent that he wrote a series of prayers and named it Arlogg Muzewmin, attributing his inspiration to the childhood occurrence. The priest renowned for his humility and modest ways seems to have had other visions. Antonia (Nellie) Bartolo, who served as Dun Gorg's housekeeper from 1948, recounted an episode which was also heard by members of the MUSEUM. Already a priest, he was one day walking through Marsa on his way to Paola.
At one point, a young man pulling a cart loaded with fodder cried out to the priest asking him for help to push the cart. As Dun Gorg was pushing the cart, recounts another witness, he felt a sensation of peace and happiness and the young man suddenly disappeared.
Many recall Dun Gorg's special devotions to the Cross and Holy Mary, his prayer and perseverance and the conviction that "God controls everything according to His will". This seems to have helped the saint get through moments of difficulty, most notably when he was being misunderstood by members of the clergy and people who were suspicious of his ways.
According to members of the MUSEUM who relayed information heard from Dun Gorg himself, the priest, who would become one of the most esteemed for his holiness, was not accepted by his peers as an adolescent, especially when playing football.
A member of the MUSEUM who later became the superior general in 1967, Francis Saliba, heard Dun Gorg recount how he used to feel left out when peers did not accept him as a young boy. "He used to say this, I believe, so that we would not be discouraged when we felt like strangers to the world," Mr Saliba told the Vatican commission.
Mr Saliba also heard Mgr Giuseppe Schembri, who was at school with Dun Gorg, recounts that the priest spoke to his friends about religious and moral thoughts during recreation. He was held in high esteem and loved by his companions.
An interesting childhood anecdote Dun Gorg seems to have mentioned often, as an example of people's bad tendencies, was that he had stolen a small candelabrum from the church of St Cajetan, in Hamrun, when he was seven. He first took it home but afterwards went to confession and returned it.
Dun Gorg had no special friends. Not even his close collaborators knew exactly who his friends were. He had words of gratitude for his teachers, and loved the members of the society "sincerely" and "without preference".
One witness, George Wilson, said Dun Gorg was the "friend of everybody and the friend of nobody". Many agreed that the priest sought a constant equilibrium in showing affection to people, kept at arms length from women and stressed that "only mortified eyes will see heaven".
What seems to have impressed people was Dun Gorg's habit of kissing people's feet. He stopped only when Archbishop Mauro Caruana ordered him to refrain from doing so. The characteristic of obedience was evident to those who lived with Dun Gorg, who say he saw in his superiors' orders the will of God.
People admired his zeal and his fear of God. These attributes, according to witnesses, won the priest a reputation of sainthood that made people flock to him for confession.
Many found striking the simplicity expressed by his way of life: his modest house, his refusal to accept donations for Masses, and the fact that he ate and slept very little.
On his deathbed, on July 26, 1962, as he breathed with difficulty, he is said to have been calm as he repeated the words "God is purifying me". Surrounded by his housekeeper, Nellie Bartolo, and other people including two nuns, Dun Gorg gazed often at a picture of St Michael the Archangel and kissed for the last time the emblem of the society he had founded more than 50 years before.
This is the last in a series of three articles based on interviews carried out during the sainthood cause in the run-up to the canonisation of Blessed Gorg Preca at St Peter's Basilica on Sunday.