In a corner of the historic Msida Bastion Cemetery stands the newly-restored headstone of a 21-year-old British woman, deaf and mute, who died in Malta in 1848.

For decades, the tomb lay unmarked, the headstone discarded by a nearby wall but yesterday Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Galea-Curmi joined a small group to place flowers there and pray for the repose of the soul of Emily Leeves.

The reason for the belated honour lies in months of research by Mgr Philip Calleja, who located the unassuming tomb and uncovered the intriguing link it forms between Malta and Mother Mary Veronica of the Passion, born Sophie Leeves, Emily’s sister, who founded the Sisters of the Apostolic Carmel and whom Pope Francis set on the path to sainthood when he declared her Venerable four years ago.

Mgr Calleja, who heads the Emigrants Commission, told Times of Malta his interest had been piqued some five months ago when a Carmelite nun in Malta discovered that Sophie Leeves had converted from Protestantism to Catholicism while in Malta as a young woman and asked for his help in locating her baptism certificate.

Mgr Philip Calleja located the unassuming tomb at the Msida Bastion Cemetery.

His research included Sophie Leeves’s autobiographical writings as well as Church records and the archives of the Sisters of St Joseph in Malta, with whom she and her sisters had attended school and whom she joined as a nun after her conversion.

What he discovered was that Sophie – together with the ill-fated Emily and their sisters Catherine and Mary-Anne – had come to Malta from London with their father, a British military chaplain, in 1847. They came seeking the warm weather after Emily became ill, prompting fears she would not survive the harsh winter conditions at home.

Emily nevertheless died a year later and was buried at the Msida Bastion Cemetery but not before she was secretly converted to Catholicism.

“At Malta,” Sophie later wrote, “we had Catholic servants and our maid, seeing little Emily was fast sinking, unknown to any of us, went to her confessor and asked if she might baptise this little Protestant deaf and dumb girl before she died. The priest gave her leave, for although Emily was 20 years, she was just like a baby in innocence and ignorance of evil.”

Sophie herself converted shortly after, at the Ta’ Ġieżu church, in Valletta, and was confirmed in private by Bishop Publio Maria Sant. She joined the Sisters of St Joseph, taking the name Mary Veronica of the Passion and eventually setting off for India, where she founded her new Order.

Her unfortunate sister’s Malta resting place, however, would have remained unknown but for Mgr Calleja, who found a reference to the grave plot, tracked it down along with the headstone and oversaw its restoration.

“If it weren’t for the Sister who sought out the baptism certificate, we still wouldn’t know anything about it,” he said.

Today, the grave is marked. Its headstone bears one of the few crucifixes in the largely Protestant ceremony, a mark of Emily’s deathbed conversion to Catholicism. Beneath it, the eternal words from the biblical book of Isaiah: “The ears of the deaf shall be unstopped and the tongue of the dumb sing.”