To-day I say the final good bye to a dear friend of mine, Fr Anton Sammut.

The phone call that woke me up last Monday at 5.15am came as a surprise. It was our energetic parish priest, Fr Josef Mifsud. “Dun Anton has died”, he said sadly. I was shocked.

I had visited him the previous day at Mater Dei Hospital. He was in pain but not in a bad shape. “I’ll come tomorrow”, I promised before leaving. That tomorrow never came.

Fr Anton Sammut was a very fine man and a dedicated priest. One could really say about him that he was 84 years young.

“You will soon lose the Maltese citizenship” I used to tease him.

Some may have thought that my comment was inspired by his spending thirty years in India. He had gone there in 1952. I was two years old then. He was one of a small group of members of the Society of Christian Doctrine (il-Muzew) who went to India hoping to set up shop over there. The project did not get off the ground. The young Anton then entered the Seminary and was eventually ordained a priest in the diocese of Jhansi.

His biggest contribution there was in the field of education. In the early 1960s he took over the running of Christ the King School. It had just over 400 students and was beset by continuous problems, mostly of a financial nature. Fr Anton worked very hard. At the time of leaving it had a student population of 2,000 and was recognised as the best among the three Anglo Indian School in Jhansi. It was later recognised as a College, and therefore its students did not have to join another college to join the University.

Now let me backtrack to my quip about him losing Maltese citizenship. The reason was that he never grumbled. No Maltese gemgem blood runs in his veins. He was also a very good writer; simple but helpful inspirational books were the fruit of his pen.

But most of all he was a very good priest. He always smiled, served people kindly and helped everyone generously. His exposure to so many religions and culture made him an open minded men harbouring few dogmas and tolerant to the extreme. He did what had to be done whether he was at the Seminary during his stint as Assistant Headmaster or at the Curia where he helped out at the Secretariat for the Clergy or at the St Joseph the Worker Parish, B’Kara. I never heard him say no to anything he was asked to do.

Today (Wednesday) afternoon we will give him the final farewell during the celebration of the Mass. He will be happy that his is a Mass that he will not have to preach in. Although a very good preacher he was all tensed up before each homily he delivered.

Good bye my friend. We all miss you a lot.