Fr Robert Wirth, SJ, who spent 37 years in India from 1954 to 1991, has just celebrated the 50th anniversary of his priesthood with a Mass on Palm Sunday attended by his many Wirth relatives.

Fr Wirth thanked God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and Our Lady for his vocation and for “taking care of me over these years in my priestly mission, despite my shortcomings”.

He thanked his mother, who died when he was only nine, for her upbringing, and his father who allowed him to become a Jesuit, as well as the rest of his family, his fellow priests and teachers for all that they did for him. He also saluted his past students in Calcutta.

Educated at St Aloysius College, Fr Wirth left school at 16 and joined the Society of Jesus a year later. He left for India in 1954, where he studied for the priesthood; he was ordained on March 24, 1963, in Guhiajori and spent the next eight years in various parts of India teaching and doing pastoral work.

Fr Wirth then spent 20 years in Calcutta, from 1971 to 1991, where he set up the Leadership Training Service (LTS) at St Xavier’s College. In 2009 he returned to Calcutta where he was honoured with the first ever Lifetime Achievement Award in the history of the LTS and referred to as a “towering personality” in the history of the movement.

The LTS teaches its members to be efficient leaders, to offer assistance to all in need and to be “agents of social change”.

Fr John Rogers, SJ, India’s national promoter of the LTS, had said at the award ceremony: “This is the most prestigious award given in the history of LTS. Right now, no one in the LTS deserves it as you deserve it, Fr Robbie.”

Fr Wirth returned to Malta in 1991 where he served as chaplain of St Aloysius College. From 1996 to 1999, he was chaplain at the University of Malta; he was Superior of St Xavier House in Valletta from 1999 to 2002 and rector of Loyola House, Naxxar, from 2002 to 2008. He now does pastoral work at Sarria House, Floriana.