To many friends, Fr Peter Serracino Inglott is synonymous with misadventure, almost an accident waiting to happen at every turn. So his biography would not have been complete without the humorous incidents the priest found himself in over the years.

Biographer Daniel Massa says that Fr Peter always maintained that any attempt to account for his life in community “ought to be infused with his strong sense of commitment to his priestly vocation, as well as with a strong dose of humour”.

From the unconfirmed legend that a day-old Peter slipped from his mother’s soapy hands, bumping his head on the floor, to the incident on a train in England when he threw his trousers out the window only to discover that he did not have an extra pair and had to make-do with a Scottish kilt donated by a kind man, the book is a continuous balance between seriousness and humour.

His childhood friend, Roland Flamini, told Prof. Massa that “throughout school and university, he [Fr Peter] always looked like an unmade bed”.

It is at the seminary that mischief followed Fr Peter. He once accompanied the seminary rector to Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night at Knights’ hall theatre in Valletta.

But Fr Peter, who was supposed to stand at the back of the audience, ended up on stage playing the part of Antonio after he was asked to stand in for a missing actor.

Make-up played wonders and the rector had no idea that his student had, without permission, accepted the offer.

Prof. Massa documents this incident: “When the play was over, Roland [Flamini] helped Peter wash off his make-up, so that with great celerity he could return to the back of the hall where he should have stayed.

“Monsignor Pantalleresco was still exchanging small courtesies with other distinguished guests, and when Peter saw him craning his neck looking out for his theatre-loving seminarian, he rejoined him looking as innocent as a lamb… not a lamb to the slaughter, he hoped.”

And slaughter he did, years later in the village of Locri, Italy, when he drove over a hen much to the horror of its angry owner, who insisted on being compensated for unlaid eggs.

It was the late 1960s and Fr Peter formed part of a group of Maltese volunteers. He veered into a haystack to avoid a donkey, his favourite animal, plummeting into a flock of fowl.

But beyond the Fr Peter accidents, the book also documents other instances of amusement, one of which involved Gozo Bishop Mario Grech.

The bishops were gathered for a conference in Rome with the highlight being a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI. Fr Peter was there as part of the team that organised the event.

After the Pope gave his speech, the bishops were introduced.

When it was Bishop Mario Grech’s turn, Pope Benedict did not recognise him.

Fr Peter recalled the quizzical look on the Pope’s face as Mgr Grech told him: Gozo. The answer left the Pope even more puzzled.

“So Mario then said: Għawdex… which mystified him even more… Mario then told him: Gozo – Malta… so then the Pope’s eyes lit up: ah, he said, Jamaica!”

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