I had been eager to briefly remove myself from the Maltese islands for many years. I longed for a refreshing renewal somewhere well beyond my security patch. However, the many commitments which devoured all my time and kept me homebound made it impossible to get away before I did. Finally, setting a reasonable deadline for myself, I was determined to keep to it. And I did.

This was last year. Until then I was thoroughly engrossed with my latest literary project – Mintoff’s biography – on which I had been working for the last eight years. The venture gobbled up five years of painstaking research in Malta, Gozo and abroad, and another three years for the actual writing process of the book.

Exceedingly delayed and long overdue, I was firmly resolute that my departure would not be deterred by anything beyond the project’s completion; not even by the book’s final printing process. It was purely for this reason – and surely not for any hassle related to the book’s subsequent launch – that I was off prior to the roll of the printing machines.

Even so, COVID-19 threatened to thwart me. Pondering where I could drop anchor in my venture, I was made aware at the time that all of Europe, the US and many other parts of the world, such as Israel, were impassable due to the raging epidemic.

Only parts of Latin America seemed to be sporadically open to foreigners. As it happened, while my religious superior here in Malta had been suggesting that I look in that direction, it occurred to me to test the waters by contacting the Gozitan bishop resident there, Mgr Giovanni Cefai, of the Missionary Society of St Paul. It was he who helped settle on Peru as my final destination.

I went there with an open mind and an open heart, presuming nothing, amenable for everything; willingly and gladly trusting my fate in the hands of Mgr Cefai.

This 53-year-old prelate had been consecrated bishop less than two years previously to head a brand new diocese bordering Bolivia in the south-east of Peru. In bygone days he had been one of my philosophy students at Malta’s university.

It is strenuous work, indeed, but gratifying and fulfilling

Only days after my arrival in Peru, seeing that I already possessed some working knowledge of Spanish and was all set to tough it out, Mgr Cefai assigned me to one of his remotest parishes at an altitude of some 1,500 metres above sea level, deep in Peru’s highlands or sierra.

I have stayed and worked there ever since. The parish is made up of two county districts, San Juan del Oro and Yanahuaya, both part of the province of Sandia in the Puno region.

Environmentally, the Peruvian sierra is a natural paradise with wide and powerful rivers, mountains covered with dense woods and luxuriant vegetation of any kind, streams, waterfalls large and small, brooks, ravines, valleys, low-hanging lily-white clouds and all sorts of animals and birds. Overhead, high and low, the numerous condors are daily companions.

Imagine the south-eastern Peruvian sierra as an enormous open greenhouse (sierra means greenhouse), complete with the perpetual warmth and the constant drizzle which frequently becomes a shower and seasonally, especially from around Christmas through March, turns into daily torrents, flooding the waterways and triggering destructive landslides. Only dirt roads alongside mountains exist. All are perilously perched over deep gorges and, with their sludge and mire, are quite hazardous to negotiate.

To my happy surprise, I discovered that almost everyone possesses some kind of motorcycle to get along between chakras (farms) scattered all over the mountain sides, their workplace and the small pueblos (villages). I have one too, an old Sumo 200, which serves me well and gets me to the remotest of my parish villages two to three hours of driving away.

I visit my parishioners in far-off pueblos on an almost daily basis. Most of the people of Peru’s sierra are ethnically quechua, meaning that they constitute one line of descendants of the Incas. Though Spanish is more or less spoken by all, some speak their own quechua language. Most of them are Catholic – very much so – though their religiousness is also melded with some ancient Inca tribalism which needs to be respected.

I carry out my ministry in Spanish. The parish, three times the geographical surface of the Maltese islands, contains some 7,000 souls who generally work either in the coffee or cocoa plantations on the mountain sides or else in the gold mines down by the rivers.

Fr Montebello together with children from one of the remote parishes assigned to him.

It is I who go to the people in their pueblos and chakras, and not the other way round, administering to their spiritual needs, preparing them with others for the sacraments and tending to their sick and dead. It is strenuous work, indeed, but gratifying and fulfilling. I love the simplicity of it all and even its native sagacity.

I do not really consider myself a missionary in the strictest of senses if not in the general meaning of every baptised Christian. My time in Peru is perhaps more of a learning experience than anything else.

What I hope to achieve by leaving my comfort zone is to detoxicate my mind and heart from the myriad distractions of the spirit to better focus on God’s grace. As Providence ordained, my interaction with delightful people in Peru’s sierra and my daily dealings with the exotic circumstances which come along are helping me splendidly to do just that.

How long I will stay there I do not know and prefer to leave this to the good Lord. Of this I am sure: that my return shall come about only to bear witness to the rewards which my sojourn had proffered me.

Until then, I thank most heartily all my benefactors, both spiritual and material, and assure them of my trust in their prayers as I pledge them mine.

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