New Spiritual Director for Inter Club Malta

The choice automatically fell on Fr Thomas Calleja, a Franciscan who is also a member of this same club.

Fr Thomas Calleja was born at Paola in 1951. Before joining the Franciscan Conventuals, he was a civil servant at the Post Office Department, an active member in the Paola Pageant Group, and he was also involved in the Parish of Christ the King.

After his novitiate in Padoa, together with Fr Tonio, with whom he completed his spiritual formation, Thomas studied philosophy and theology at Inserm until he was ordained priest on the seventh of July 1985. After his ordination, he continued his studies at the Gregorian University in Rome where he obtained his Licentiate in Spiritual Theology.

Back in Malta he worked tirelessly in vocation groups and as a parish priest at St Paul’s Bay parish church. Between 1995 and 2003 he worked as a missionary. He spent the first four and a half years in the Philippines where he taught the novices. He also spent a year as a Rector at the Seminary. Later he spent some eighteen months taking care of the English community in Istanbul, Turkey. Two years before he returned to Malta he was a member of the Community Sacro Convento at Assisi.

Fr Thomas has a vast experience in the field of Evangelisation.  He was asked to address conferences and chair retreats in Nigeria and Tanzania in Africa, in India, Japan, Korea, China, USA as well as in other European countries.

Fr Thomas is a regular contribution of a good number of articles published in several journals in Malta and abroad. The last publication of Fr Thomas was the book: ‘L-Ikona, Il-Vanġelu bil-kulur’, for which in 2007 he won the National Book Prize.

Apart from the usual pastoral work, Fr Thomas is often asked to take part in conferences, sermons and retreats plus the spiritual guidance he gives to religious members of the Church. Since October 2011, Fr Thomas has been giving his service as director to the Franciscan Missionary Centre at Rabat.

Although Fr Thomas is deeply engaged in his pastoral work, yet he always makes it a point not to miss a single game played by the Inter team. When he plans his holidays he always succeeds to watch an Inter match at San Siro. While his office is copiously decorated with holy pictures, statues and religious icons, his bedroom is decked with flags, team gears, photos and other Inter memorabilia, which he has been collecting since 1964 when he was only thirteen years old, incidentally when Inter succeeded to win the Champions Cup for the first time.