For Andre Abela, 14, unwavering dedication to a dying friend is nothing short of normal.

“If I know someone is unwell I’d go to see him, let alone if he was my friend. What I did felt like an everyday thing and was completely natural to me,” Andre said, after receiving the Pope John XXIII Kindness Award yesterday.

When he was in Form 3 at St Margaret College, Boys Secondary, Verdala in Cospicua, Andre went beyond simply struggling with the idea that a friend of his was going to die of leukaemia. He was the first to volunteer to visit him regularly in hospital, would leave his PlayStation there for the boy to play with and would even organise group visits to hospital. “I used to go and help him. Even though he was sick we would still play and he’d open up to me,” Andre said.

“When I used to go and see him he’d be very happy and he’d ask me to take things to play with or DVDs to watch together,” he said.

This went on for nine months, and Andre’s promise to remain by his friend’s side did not falter when the boy’s illness got progressively worse. There were times in the last three months of his life when the boy could not have many visitors because of his weak immune system, but Andre kept in touch through Facebook.

“It is people like Andre, with a sense of altruism, who reach out to others to give the best possible help to people in need,” President George Abela said during the award ceremony at the Palace in Valletta.

A strong society was built on the values such as those shown by Andre and it was up to society to show what such values were worth, he added.

Fr Dionysius Mintoff, director of the Peace Lab that organises the award, said children recognised values and picked them up from anywhere around them. Andre, he said, represented the many students who had a heart of gold.