Please allow me to pay a brief but sincere tribute to my late brother-in-law, Fr Guido Schembri, OP, who passed away on March 20, at the age of 91 years.

I actually got to know Fr Guido about 10 years before I met his sister, Miriam, who became my wife, when, soon after ordination, he began teaching Latin at St Albert the Great College, Valletta. I remember struggling through Caesar’s De bello Gallico and Virgil’s Aeneid, not to mention those infernal declensions, under his watchful eye. A few years later, in October 1963, he officiated at our wedding at Stella Maris church in Sliema.

Fr Guido, or Joe as we called him by his birth name, visited his sister and me in Canberra soon after we had moved into a brand-new house and he helped in converting our backyard of weeds and rubble into a lawn and garden. There were other visits later when he wed our son, Shaun, and daughter Sylvia, in Melbourne.

Fr Guido had quite an interesting career as a Dominican priest. He spent time as a chaplain at Wheelus Air Force Base, a US military complex in Libya, when that country was still a kingdom. He served also as a librarian at the Vatican and a relieving priest in Edinburgh and New York.

All of us, especially the children, enjoyed his company during his visits to Australia. He had a zest for life and an infectious sense of humour (he laughed at all my jokes).

May he rest in peace now.