Appreciation - Fr Edward Camilleri SJ

Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano writes:

Even before the obituary had appeared in the newspapers, e-mails were circulating among past pupils of St Aloysius' College announcing that Fr Eddie had gone to meet the Risen Lord.

For most past pupils, particularly those who were at St Aloysius in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, it is difficult to imagine the college without Fr Eddie. For someone with a nickname like Il-fridge - only the old Lyceum was capable of coming up with similarly remarkable and memorable nicknames for teachers - Fr Eddie earned not only the respect but, above all else, the affection of all those who knew him.

His total commitment to the ideals of the college and to its pupils puts him in that select category of people who have devoted their entire lives to the education and formation of youth in Malta. There are few offices at St Aloysius that Fr Eddie did not occupy.

He was rector (1959-1965), prefect of discipline (1953-1958, 1981-1983), house minister (1957-1958), chaplain of the Old Aloysians Association and teacher of various subjects.

As a priest he spent hours in the confessional, in counselling and - something which is not recorded in the official history of the college - in helping needy families by distributing items - beds, furniture, clothes -he managed to collect from all those he got to know.

As students we were awed by his apparently inexhaustible energy. Even his strict discipline went down well as it was always balanced out with personally rewarding comments for good behaviour and tempered by good humour. He was always fair. Years after we had left the college, he would still remember most of us by name, recalling particular incidents of mischief in which each one of us was involved. Unfortunately, his last years were marred by almost total loss of memory.

In the third volume of Jesuit Schools In Malta, Fr Anton Azzopardi SJ, who succeeded Fr Eddie as rector in 1965, recalls his own words at the Prize-Giving Ceremony on November 14, 1965: "We cannot mention Fr Edward Camilleri," said Fr Azzopardi, "without remembering his complete dedication to the college, his interest in everything that belonged to college life, the new look that he gave to the college during the years of his rectorship, with the new grounds and laboratories, the parlours and recreation rooms, the Sixth Form and many other activities, as also the classroom furniture, but particularly the piety and the religious spirit that he was so keen to instil in the boys".

Fr Eddie, like so many other educators before him, has left this world but his legacy lives on in the motto made famous by the 16th century Jesuit educator Juan de Bonifacio: "puerilis institutio est mundi renovatio" (the education of youth is the renewal of the world).