Fr Adeodato C. Schembri,  OSA, will be celebrating 55 years of his priestly vocation with a Thanksgiving Mass at St Augustine church in Victoria on Saturday at 6pm.

Fr Schembri was ordained priest by the late Gozo Bishop Gużeppi Pace at the same church on March 12, 1967. It was the last ordination carried out by Mgr Pace.

After his ordination, Fr Schembri was assigned to the Augustinian missions in Brazil, where he spent 37 years working among the poor.

He says his love for the missions is always on his mind. His 25-year parish experience in Sao Paulo was something that he will treasure all his life. Ten years were dedicated to missionary work at the parish of Mato Grosso do Sul, while he also spent some time at the Belo Horizonte and Rolandia parishes.

Fr Schembri says that his first years at the missions were not easy due to the language problem, but by time he managed to communicate quite easily after following Portuguese courses at the

Dominican Sisters monastery and at university in Brazil.