The man who set up Malta’s diplomatic service, Frederick Amato-Gauci, has passed away aged 98.

Former Prime Minister MEP Alfred Sant said Mr Amato-Gauci will be remembered as the man who, in the aftermath of World War II through to Malta’s Independence and in later years, modernised the island’s public administrative system.

Mr Amato Gauci also set up the local National Insurance Scheme and served as Malta's ambassador to Germany.

Former Ombudsman Joe Sammut said: “He was one of the most efficient and exemplary civil servants who, from scratch, started building whole departments. He was really a manager... a first-class organiser and a model for all civil servants.”

In an article penned in July 2013 former secretary at the Foreign Affairs’ Ministry, Evarist Saliba, described Mr Amato Gauci as “the prominent civil servant” who was sent to London to study the structure and functions of such a service.

In an interview published in Times of Malta on Valentine’s Day 2009, a month after he celebrated his 68th wedding anniversary with his late wife Josephine, the couple recalled how they first met, through friends, when he had just sat for his exam to enter the civil service and had been praying to Birkirkara’s Madonna tal-Ħerba.

“When the results arrived he asked me to go with him to thank her,” his wife had said.

The funeral Mass is on Monday, at 8.45am, at St Gregory Church in Sliema.

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