Mgr Charles Vella writes:
Through his journalist son I followed with prayer the last days of a long time friend, John Manduca. He died serene with the love of his wife Slyvia and family, just as he lived.
Details about his long career as a journalist, diplomat and broadcaster have already appeared in the press. In all these spheres I had the privilege to know him and to work with him since the 1950s.
John was indeed first and foremost a Christian gentleman and, as Cardinal John Henry Newman said, to be a Christian, one has to be first and foremost a gentleman. Quoting St Paul, “a gentleman is kind, is humble, is meek, is just and enjoys with the good of others”.
This is a close portrait of John, a man with a varied life in the service of God, his family and very much so for his country. For the latter he also suffered, but as a man of sound principles and high values, he resigned from the Broadcasting Authority when the microphone and the videos became tools in the hands of the Mintoff government.
On a personal note, I ask for pardon as I recall that it was through me that John became the authority’s chief executive in 1963, of which I was already a member since its beginning. I also resigned as religious broadcasting organiser when Archbishop Michael Gonzi was manipulated and religious broadcasting passed to the hands of clergy willing to serve under Mintoff’s diktat. I remember John encouraging me to take a stand and never again did I set foot in a studio.
John wrote with courage and objectively on the political and religious questions of the time. As a journalist, manager and later on as a diplomat, he was a just man of all seasons.
This shone in his intelligence and style of the old school,when I visited him in London in 1988, where he elevated Malta’s prestige and healed the open wounds Labour (Mintoff and Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici) created in relations with Great Britain. I felt proud of him and his wife when the Archbishop of Westminster praised this Maltese High Commissioner in London.
I am sure he left the same imprint in Scandinavian countries and in Ireland where he served as ambassador.
So much can be said of John, whose publications still speak his mind. John could have even become a politician, but in all these roles he served Malta in a more noble and efficient way.
To his wife Slyvia and all his family I continue to pray, remember and treasure the many things I learnt from John.