The foster family of Russian orphan Maxim Vorobyev has been given the go ahead to bury him, five weeks after the 16-year-old went missing and was later found dead in the sea.

"At least we can finally bury him," Carmen Pace, the woman who fostered the boy for the past seven years, said.

The funeral, planned for Saturday, will bring to an end more than a month of painful events for the Valletta family, although Mrs Pace said this would by no means stem their grief.

"We talk about him all the time. His absence is felt in whatever we are doing," she said.

The boy's sister and brother, Alessia and Artem, who were fostered by Mrs Pace's sister Carmen Spiteri, often cried for their brother. The three siblings were reunited in Malta by the two Pace sisters after having spent their lives apart in different orphanages.

"Sometimes they're at my house, playing or watching television and they start talking about Maxim and how he would have been spending time with them hadn't all this happened," she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

The boy left the block of apartments in St Ursula Street, where both the Paces and Spiteris live, on February 25, to take a bowl of jelly to a jewellery shop in Republic Street so that Mrs Pace's brother would then take it to hospital for her ailing uncle, who passed away days later.

However, he never made it to the shop and the family spent days scouring the island in the hope of finding him.

Eleven days after he disappeared, the boy's lifeless body was spotted in the sea close to the fish market, in Valletta. It was retrieved by army divers and later identified by Mrs Pace's husband, Albert.

An autopsy determined that the teenager had drowned and forensic sources said no signs of violence had been found on the body.

Mrs Pace said her fondest memory of the boy would remain the one of the day he arrived in Malta and seeing his sister's tears of joy when the two siblings finally met after years apart. In a light moment she recounted how a year after he arrived, the then 10-year-old boy hid under the bed. "I looked everywhere for him for quite some time until finally I found him under the bed. He just wanted to tease me," she said, wearing a weak smile.

The funeral will be held on Saturday morning at the St Mary of Jesus (Ta' Ġieżu) church, in Valletta, which he frequented.

"He often came with me to Mass. It is fit to hold his funeral there," she said.