The Strange Case of Dr Camilleri: Apostate, Catholic and Anglican Missionary

Our resident historian Richard Challoner shares his intriguing article on the colourful life of a priest who was a locum at Holy Trinity in 1881.

In one of the boxes of letters and papers stored in Holy Trinity's archive can be found a memorandum dated September 1881. The author of this memorandum was Revd. Michel Angelo Camilleri D.D. who served as locum priest for Holy Trinity Nice during the summer and autumn of 1881 in the absence of the Chaplain, Charles Childers. The memorandum was 'To be left for Mr Harris or any one of the gentlemen connected with Trinity Church' ('Mr Harris' was J.C. Harris, the British Vice-Consul in Nice); the tone suggests a forthright individual not afraid of dispensing advice, whether it was welcome or not.

Revd. Dr Camilleri points out what he believes to be two defects of Holy Trinity Church and its surroundings. First he expresses his belief in the necessity 'of having all the garden passages and approaches to Trinity Church cemented...Without which the church will be kept damp, dirty and dusty. It is an expense which once made will remain good forever.' Dr Camilleri's second criticism concerns the church itself which he states 'has no ventilation whatever being built as if the climate at Nice was like that of England! In hot days, and generally throughout the summer, the church is most tryingly hot, especially after nine o'clock in the morning, and dangerously so in the afternoon.'

He recommends hanging curtains on all the windows 'save the east window,' and curtains which can be easily opened and closed.

In a rather arrogant and assertive manner Camilleri continues: ‘The architect, or they who gave him the contract, did not understand his business; architecture in these climates requiring a different treatment from that of England - & the very walls being at fault....I notice this because in case of enlargement at the Carabacel Chapel, that not half finished building should be pulled down & a new Chapel built two metres higher from the ground, and thick walls started with small windows, made to open & shut at leisure...'

Having offered his opinions on what he perceived to be the shortcomings of Holy Trinity Church and Carabacel Chapel, Dr Camilleri penned a postscript apparently directed at Vice-Consul Harris. He refers to Mr Harris' 'interest in the protection of animals,' and mentions 'the cruelty I have observed on the tramways at the corner of Place Massena for tramcars coming from Magnan; & at the street which goes from rue Gioffredo to the Pont view.' In those days tramcars were pulled by horses and Dr Camilleri states that because at both of the aforementioned points the road is uphill, the weight of the tramcar is too much for one horse to pull. In his opinion '...there ought to be an extra horse at each of those corners, to be attached to the tram car until the elevated ground ends.' Camilleri concludes his postscript by saying: 'You will deserve the Society's medal or honorable (sic) mention if you write to the Directors of the Tramways of Nice; and if recalcitrant, if you sue them under the French law, and compel them to do so – it is [in] their own interest to save the poor beasts from undue work.'

The 'Society' to which Dr Camilleri refers is very likely the S.P.C.A (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), founded in a London coffee shop in 1824 and the very first animal welfare society in the world. (Royal patronage, from Queen Victoria, came in 1837 and the royal 'Royal' was added in 1840.) The S.P.C.A was a very progressive organisation for the time and in its first year brought 63 offenders to court. Dr Camilleri – and by inference J.C. Harris – were apparently progressively-minded men, but this is not entirely surprising.

In looking for ways to increase public awareness of and involvement in animal welfare issues, the Society turned early on to the Church and encouraged annual anti-cruelty sermons. The first such sermon was preached at the Whitechapel Church in March 1827 by the Rev Dr Rudge. In 1865 annual “Animal Sunday” church services were instituted in order for clergy to deliver anti-cruelty sermons and the first of these sermons was given in London on 9th July 1865 by no less a person than Revd. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, the Dean of Westminster. The annual “Animal Sunday” service was later adopted by churches in Australia and New Zealand and very possibly at Anglican churches around the world. It is tempting to think that anti-cruelty sermons may have been preached at Holy Trinity, perhaps even by Revd. Dr Camilleri, given that he was the locum in the summer of 1881. One might have expected in view of Dr Camilleri's postscript, that he and vice-Consul Harris would have subscribed to the R.S.P.C.A; curiously however, the Society has no record of them ever being members. 

At the time he acted as locum at Holy Trinity, Dr Camilleri was the vicar of St Mary the Virgin in Lyford Oxfordshire, a living presented to him in 1863 by the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College, in whose gift it was. Two years earlier, on the 21st September 1861, an article appeared in the Hampshire Chronicle, Southampton and Isle of Wight Courier, concerning a meeting at the Mechanics Institute in Winchester on the subject of  'the religious condition of Italy.' One of the speakers was Dr Camilleri, whom the article describes as having been for many years 'an active parish priest in La Valetta (sic), the capital of Malta.' The article continues: 'Though conscious of many faults of the Romish system, he long continued, for want of a better way, to fulfil his daily service under a church for which he had ceased to feel respect, until a friend placed in his hand a copy of the English Prayer Book. After diligent and prayerful study of it, he felt that he had found the clue to his difficulties and applied for admission into the Church of England.'

The article then refers to the 'menace and abuse' to which Dr Camilleri was subjected as the result of his decision and adds, 'After he had thus made proof of his sincerity, by meekly bearing ill-will, and by giving up his means of sustenance, an English nobleman befriended him, brought him to England, and eventually found him work under Canon Wordsworth (Canon of Westminster Abbey). For the last ten or twelve years, during which he has lived in England, he has been a steady, consistent parish clergyman.'

It would be a hard person indeed who could not find some sympathy with such a meek and courageous individual, so inspired in his conversion to Anglicanism and willing to suffer for his adopted Church. Along with the well-intentioned, animal loving, if abrasive personality that emerges from the Memorandum, it all suggests a clergyman well respected in the Anglican Church. As we have seen though, the tone of the memorandum in Holy Trinity's archive in itself belies the description of 'meek' applied to Dr Camilleri in the article; much more curious however, is the fact that the Hampshire Chronicle's account of Dr Camilleri's life in Malta, his conversion and departure for England, is almost entirely fictitious.

In all likelihood the author of the article was simply recording what he had been told, either by Dr Camilleri himself or Anglican authorities. There can be little doubt that both would have preferred this heavily sanitised version of Dr Camilleri's earlier life to the truth, which was that eighteen years earlier Michel Angelo Camilleri had been at the heart of a scandal that rocked the Catholic Church in Malta and the nascent Anglican Bishopric of Gibraltar. Despite his no doubt sincere interest in Anglicanism, Dr Camilleri's conversion and his problems with the Catholic Church had rather less to do with a moment of spiritual enlightenment than with more earthy (and earthly) matters in the shape of a young Maltese widow. The true story of Dr Camilleri was one of illicit love, elopement, recantation and violent confrontation with the law; the tale in fact, of an apostate Catholic priest.

Michel Angelo Camilleri was probably born in 1814, the year after Malta became a British Crown Colony and Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Maitland was appointed as the first British Governor. Unsurprisingly, as a Catholic country with ecclesiastics serving on the Maltese Council of Government, becoming a Dependency of a Protestant nation caused tension from the first. Maitland's autocratic style and refusal to allow Maltese representation on the British Executive Council did not help, and neither did the standard British suspicion of Catholicism, or 'Popery.'

Until 1839 there was no place of Anglican worship on Malta, and Anglican services were held in a room of the former palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of St John (now known as the Knights of Malta whose headquarters are in Rome.) In 1839, the Dowager Queen Adelaide, widow of William IV, on a visit to Malta commissioned a church to be built. Completed in 1844, the Pro-Cathedral and Collegiate Parish Church of St Paul stands in Independence Square Valetta, still serving the city's Anglican community. It is one of the three cathedrals of the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe, the other two being in Gibraltar and Brussels. The Diocese of Gibraltar itself was formed during the construction of St Paul's, Valletta, on the 29th September 1842 and its first Bishop, Dr George Tomlinson was ordained shortly thereafter. Less than nine months later, both the Diocese and Bishop Tomlinson would be embroiled in the scandal surrounding Michel Angelo Camilleri.

Camilleri started reading theology at the Theological College of the University of Malta in 1834 and had the degree of Doctor of Divinity conferred on him in 1838. Thereafter he worked as a parish priest in Valletta and also, according to one account, in Algeria. It was in Valletta however, sometime before 1843, that he took the post of superintendent of the boys' section of a coeducational school and met Emanuela Fleri the mistress of the girls' section. Emanuela was a 31- year-old widow and mother of two children, whose husband, Dr Publio Fleri, had died in 1839. It would seem that the priest and the school mistress fell in love and Camilleri, who possibly already had doubts about his vocation as a Catholic priest, now found that he had an even greater reason for casting that vocation aside, which he proceed to do in spectacular fashion. Camilleri and Fleri eloped to Gibraltar in early June 1843, taking her two children Luigi and Carmela with them. At Gibraltar both of them, Fleri probably at Camilleri's instigation, publicly renounced their Catholicism and embraced the Protestant religion, or, as The Statesman and Dublin Christian Record (of 29th November 1844) put it more colourfully, 'made an open recantation of popery and profession of Protestantism.'

It was at this point that the right Revd. George Tomlinson, newly ordained Bishop of Gibraltar, entered the story, somewhat controversially ordaining Michel Angelo Camilleri an Anglican minister and, on the 13th  June 1843, marrying Camilleri to Emanuela Fleri according to Anglican rites. Seemingly oblivious to the scandal this would arouse in Malta, the couple returned to Valletta with the two children and took up residence at 83, Strada Ponente. The Statesman and Dublin Christian Record gives a dramatic, though possibly exaggerated impression of the reception that Dr Camilleri received on his return to Malta stating that 'He has...been therefore subjected to persecution by the mob, as well as the ecclesiastics of Rome. His life has been saved from the fury of the populace only by the interposition of the British police.' Whether or not the Maltese populace were so aroused to fury by the apostate priest, Emanuela Fleri's mother-in-law, Evangelista Fleri, was certainly infuriated enough to sue for the custody of her two grandchildren in February 1844.

Evangelista Fleri petitioned the Royal Civil Court, claiming, as the law permitted her to do, the right to constitute herself guardian of her two grandchildren in order that she could bring them up in the Catholic faith. In her view Emanuela, having run off with an apostate Catholic priest and renounced the Catholic faith, 'was not lawfully married at Gibraltar but was living in a state of concubinage and that she was therefore an improper person to have charge of her children.' (Malta Times). In their edition of 13th August 1844, The Standard of London evinced a clear bias in favour of Emanuela Fleri  stating provocatively that her mother-in-law 'claimed the right to tear from her son's widow her two children, in order that she might train them up in the Roman Catholic faith...'

The Judge before whom the case came, perhaps unsurprisingly, ruled in Evangelista Fleri's favour, due in the opinion of The Standard, to the bias of the Royal Civil Court, 'the whole of whose officials are, if we mistake not, Roman Catholics...' The case was then referred to the Royal Court of Appeal at which the initial ruling was confirmed by three judges who The Standard described tartly as being 'of the same tolerant faith as that professed by the complainant.' All that remained now was for officials to enforce the Civil Court's ruling and remove the children from their mother's custody. This, however, was to be no easy undertaking and the scandal surrounding Michel Angelo Camilleri was about to reach a new level.

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On the morning of 18th June 1844, Marshal of the Court Carmelo Spiteri and his assistant arrived at  No.83 Strada Ponente, the home of Michel Angelo Carmelli and Emanuela Fleri, intending to execute the Court's order and remove Luigi and Carmela Fleri from their mother's care. No doubt Marshal Spiteri expected some difficulty and resistance from the children's mother and both Maltese and British newspapers expressed sympathy and understanding for Emanuela Fleri in this regard. However, as the Portafoglio Maltese of 1st July 1844 pointed out, being there on lawful business Marshal Spiteri did not anticipate any violence or forceful opposition and was therefore unprepared for what happen next. The Portafoglio Maltese described how the scene unfolded:

'The Rev. Michael Angelo Camilleri...after having acknowledged the commission of the Marshal and his assistant, seized a thick stick to strike them; but the stick being wrested from him after a scuffle, he called for his arms. The mother of the children, who, notwithstanding her tears and lamentations (natural enough in a mother) would probably have obeyed the law, had no one interfered or encouraged her, produced a gun, which was handed to a manservant, who had by this time been called to the assistance of his master. It may easily be conceived what was the confusion and alarm, when we state that the gun was loaded, and had powder in the pan. Luckily the officers of justice took it away from the servant without any accident; and the Rev. M.A. Camilleri being put under restraint, the Marshal succeeded at length in the execution of his warrant. The orphans were then quietly delivered into the hands of their paternal grandmother...'

That a priest, a man of God, should resist the authority of the law in such a violent manner, was a source of shock in Malta. In Britain however, the reportage stood very firmly on the other side of the fence, with the staunchly Protestant Londonderry Sentinel for example, declaring that Camilleri 'merely came to the aid of his wife, who very probably was receiving treatment from the Janisseries sent to execute a tyrannical Romish law, and nothing could be more excusable than his interference...' Justified or not, Rev. Camilleri's actions led to him being brought before the Judge of the Civil Court who felt that there was sufficient evidence to have the matter referred to the Police Court, before which Camilleri appeared the following day. Revd. Camilleri defended himself against the charges even cross-examining witnesses (including presumably Marshal Spiteri) but all to no avail. The case against the errant priest was proved and he was sentenced by the Magistrate to what the Potrtafoglio Maltese described as 'the very moderate punishment of twenty days' imprisonment.' The Portafoglio, no doubt reflecting the views of its readers and the Catholic population in general, felt that the matter was serious enough for the Magistrate to have referred Camilleri to the Criminal Court, rather than handing out such a light sentence.

The outrage mounted when it became clear that what the paper called 'Executive power' had intervened to prevent Dr Camilleri from serving any time behind bars. The Executive Power in this case was the British Governor, General Sir Patrick Stewart, who it seems, acting on the encouragement of George Tomlinson, the Bishop of Gibraltar, commuted Revd. Camilleri's sentence from twenty days imprisonment to what the Portafoglio describes as the 'trifling nominal sum of 27 shillings and ninepence.' In contrast to the lenient treatment of Michel Angelo Camilleri, the paper evidenced other cases, including that of a soldier who, with the sanction of the Governor, was sentence to transportation for many years for having thrown his cap at the President of a court-martial; and a man 'of the lower class' imprisoned for a month for opposing the authority of a soldier who was taking a vagabond into custody. In these and other cases attempts were made to obtain the liberation of those condemned; however, the Portafoglio approvingly notes, the Governor remained strictly impartial 'and the good order of society was preserved by his firmness...' 

The Portafoglio was not known for controversial opinions on religion, or any other subject and so the intensity of its reaction to these developments is significant – and perhaps understandable given that this was undoubtably regarded by most in Malta as the undermining of Maltese law and administration by the British. 'Everybody must see,' the paper inveighed, 'that an offence involving the right administration of justice has been committed, and remains unpunished; that the tribunals of the country have been outraged; that their constitutional independence has been affected...that there exists a power superior to our tribunals and to our most cherished institutions; in short, that the fulfilment of all the promises so frequently made to the Maltese for the preservation of their religion, their laws, and their usages, is in danger.'

So who was to blame for this outrage, apart of course, from the apostate priest and defier of authority, Dr Camilleri himself? Inevitably the Governor came in for criticism and Sir Patrick Stewart, who had been appointed to his post only the year before, proved to be one of the most unpopular British Governors of Malta, resigning his post in 1847. Among other things, being a strict Sabbatarian Sir Patrick stopped the traditional wearing of masks on Carnival Sunday, thereby provoking a confrontation between Maltese protesters and armed British troops, though fortunately without consequences. The Maltese press declared the Governor's action as “an act of Protestant oppression and an interference with the Catholic religion.” It is not hard to see therefore, why his interference in the Camilleri case was equally resented. Nonetheless, the Portafoglio Maltese goes so far as to state its certainty that the Governor Stewart 'without the intervention of dangerous counsel, would never have thrown the mantle of his protection over one who has violated the sanctity of the law, by opposing with arms the authority of the tribunals!' The identity of this 'dangerous counsel' and 'baneful influence...at work to destroy the felicity of the Maltese people...' is revealed to be none other the Bishop of Gibraltar, George Tomlinson: 'We never lent an ear to the alarm which the stay of this personage in Malta raised in the minds of some of our countrymen. But if the shield which has protected the Rev. M.A. Camilleri be the shield of proselytism – if he had been withdrawn from the punishment he deserves merely because he has abandoned the religion of his fathers – then we say that the first interests of this country are in great danger...'

There was evidently some closeness between Bishop of Gibraltar and Governor Stewart as in 1848 George Tomlinson married Louisa Stewart, Sir Patrick's daughter and this might explain in part at least, the Bishop's ability to persuade the Governor to intervene in the Camilleri case. At any rate, the Portafoglio Maltese were in no doubt about who the principal culprit was and in their next issue of 8th July 1844 continued their attack on the bishop. After affirming their certainty that Rev. Camilleri's freedom was obtained by the intercession of Bishop Tomlinson, the paper declared that he should not be allowed to interfere in the secular affairs of the island; and that his action was in breach of the pledge made to the Maltese people by the first Governor, Sir Thomas Maitland on 2nd January, 1815 that there would be a separation between the executive, legislative and judicial authorities, each being quite independent of the others. They also quoted Sir Thomas's promise that, save for 'great crimes', for which he held the power of pardon by Royal prerogative, he would not interfere with the law; and that the free exercise of the religion and laws of Malta and its people would be protected.

The Portafoglio further reported complaints that in the Camilleri case the Bishop of Gibraltar was listened to, while the opinions of the official councillors and others were not sought – and this at a time when the British Government were suspicious of and hostile to the influence of Catholic ecclesiastics in the affairs of the island. It then concluded its attack on Bishop Tomlinson with an indignant flourish:'Thus the impunity of the Rev. M.A. Camilleri, because he has become a Protestant, is a blow aimed at the institutions of the country, and the religion of the people, and will call down upon the Bishop of Gibraltar the odium of all classes.'

Curiously, after this diatribe against the bishop, the Portafoglio launches into a passage praising Anglican ecclesiastics in general and their virtues, stating that 'They have all acquired the esteem of our countrymen by their exemplary life, the love of their fellow-creatures, and the moderation and toleration of their intercourse with our fellow-countrymen.' In the paper's view however, the harmony in which Catholics and Protestants have lived together, has been harmed by Bishop Tomlinson's action, which could not be allowed to pass unnoticed.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Observatore Maltese, a Catholic journal, generally shared the opinions of the Portafoglio and believed that the Rev. Camilleri should have been tried in a criminal court. There were, however, voices more sympathetic towards the former Catholic priest. The Malta Times for example (an Evangelical journal), while acknowledging the facts concerning the violence of the Rev. Camilleri, expressed the opinion that he was a persecuted man because of his secession from the Catholic Church. According to the Malta Times, the Civil Court of Malta also annulled Camilleri's marriage to Emanuela Fleri, which the paper views as following the French rule of law, in which country of course, Catholics were dominant. Interestingly the paper declares that such laws were not applicable to British subjects, which suggests that at some point Rev. Camilleri, as well as adopting the Protestant faith also became a British subject. It is also interesting to note that the Malta Times received a statement from Camilleri, which may of course, have influenced their stance.

Back in London there was high indignation at the attack on the Bishop of Gibraltar, with The Standard in its 13th August, 1844 edition stating in thunderous tones that 'A statement, evidently ex parte, which appears in a rabid Popish Maltese newspaper, has been greedily seized upon by a contemporary, as a pretext for a truly jesuitical attack on the Bishop of Gibraltar and the Governor of Malta, for an imputed disregard of the feelings and prejudices of the Roman Catholic portion of the inhabitants of the latter dependency.' It is interesting to note how the newspaper neatly evading the reality that the 'Roman Catholic Portion' of the inhabitants in fact represented the overwhelming majority. The Standard's view was echoed by the Londonderry Sentinel four days later who, having defended the Bishop of Gibraltar for accepting Michel Angelo Camilleri and Emanuela Fleri into the Anglican Church and marrying them according to Anglican rites, added their assertion that the Catholic Church had long been using intermarriage to gather people into her fold, numerous people 'being obliged to conform to Popery on the day of their marriage, if those with whom they are about to connect themselves belong to that religion, and this is one of the principal instruments for making converts to Romanism among the humbler class of Protestants.' The assertion was not accurate, but it underlines the bitterness aroused by the story of the errant Maltese priest.

A more tragic figure in that story, was of course, Emanuela Fleri, who presumably out of love for Michel Angelo Camilleri, had eloped, renounced her faith and ended up without a husband or her beloved children. Early in 1845 Emanuela Fleri petitioned the Privy Council to reverse the judgement of the Maltese Civil Court and restore her children to her. Initially there was some technical difficulty with  the petition which prevented it going forward; eventually however, the appeal was allowed. Rather tragically the appeal was never actually heard as, no doubt heartbroken by the loss of her children, Emanuela died on the 25th July 1845. Her children, Luigi and Carmela, now orphans, remained with their paternal grandmother.

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When exactly, Dr Camilleri came to England is not clear, but it would have been before 1848. On 14th September 1848 in Cambridge he was married for the second time to a woman called Anne Parsley Clark. Shortly afterwards Camilleri and his new bride travelled to Cape Town in South Africa where he had been entrusted with a mission to the Muslim community by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG). The Society was founded in 1701 as an overseas missionary organization for the Church of England and began its work in North America and the West Indies, before turning its attention to the African continent in the 1750s. Missionary activities in South Africa began just over a quarter of a century before the Camilleris arrived.

In his Cape Journals of 1848-1855, Archdeacon Nathaniel Merriman, who would later be elected Bishop of Grahamstown, mentions the newly arrived missionary. In his entry for Wednesday 13th December 1848 Merriman gives a complimentary impression:

'Dr Camilleri who had just arrived on the Lion came out and spent the afternoon at Protea. He is a Maltese by birth, and was for eight years a priest in the Roman communion, partly I believe at Malta and partly at Tangier. He has come out here as a missionary to the Mahomedan population, of which there is a considerable number in and about Cape Town. He seems a person of sober earnest thoughtfulness and having a great facility of acquiring languages and knowing already the Arabic besides several European tongues, is likely, as I trust, to become a valuable and successful missionary here.' A little further on he expresses his view that Dr Camilleri, though prepared for it, will have an uphill struggle to make converts and comments that 'I am thankful to find that he agrees with me in condemning our trusting to schools for children as the means for converting a population from heathen and Mahomedan error to the truth of the Gospel.' This last point seems surprising in view of the fact that one of the first things that Dr Camilleri did on arriving in Cape Town was to set up a school located at No.19 Barrack Street, where he and his wife Anne proceeded to teach Muslim girls and boys. They also offered 'a hearty and hospitable welcome to all needy enquirers' (T.F. Lightfoot 'The Cape Malays etc).

Although numerous, the Muslim population in Cape Town were in the minority and mainly composed of poor immigrants from other parts of Africa, Asia and India, many of them former slaves until emancipation in December 1838. Unemployment, poverty, the shortage of amenities and of schools as well as churches, made it harder for missionaries to reach these people, as did their location in separate and poorer areas. Nevertheless, Dr Camilleri and his wife seemed to have made great efforts in their work. Robert Gray was consecrated the first Bishop of Cape Town on 29th June 1847 and like Archdeacon Merriman seems to have had a positive opinion of Camilleri. In June 1849 Bishop Gray wrote to the Rev. E. Hawkins, General Secretary of the SPG, to say that Camilleri 'is going on very quietly and judiciously with his Mahommedan Mission. He is obliged to be cautious in his way of dealing with people, and is approaching them not only in person but by endeavouring to interest masters and employers, several of whom meet him in class to receive instruction as to the best means of dealing with their servants.'

Despite ostensibly being in the Cape for missionary duties, the shortage of clerical staff meant that Bishop Gray was forced to use Dr Camilleri in other ways, including acting as assistant chaplain at St George's Cathedral in Cape Town, where among other things, he officiated  at marriages and christenings. The Digest of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, 1702-1892, reports that between 1849 and 1851 Dr Camilleri 'baptised 28 Malays and prepared for baptism 100 heathen (some connected with Malays), besides carrying on other works, including a district parish formed by him at Papendorp.' This was not all: in a note published in John Mayson's book, The Malays of Cape Town, Dr Camilleri writes 'Beside my mission work I was assistant chaplain to the Dean, chaplain to the gaol and house of correction, and for twelve months garrison chaplain, administering to some 400 families of soldiers, etc.' Dr Camilleri was furthermore frustrated by his inexperience in missionary work as well as that of the Anglican Church, writing in the same note:  'Would you believe, that the SPG has not yet published so much as a 'Guide for Missionaries'!...I had not only no guide, no precedent, nothing to work upon but my own good sense and experience.' 

We know something of the approach Dr Camilleri adopted in his mission from a report that he made to Bishop Gray on 31st May 1851. He commenced with a lecture course at the Cathedral, which went down well enough to attract volunteers. To these he gave further instruction in what he described as 'the errors of the Mahometan sect and of the means of opposing them,' which included examination of the Quran. When these volunteers proved to be rather too dictatorial in their approach, Camilleri changed tack and adopted what he described as 'silent intercourse', which involved the ministration of Christian friends who were close to the Malays and were much  less aggressive than the volunteers who had attended his classes. In the end however,  the hard work took its toll on both Dr Camilleri and his wife, who had from the first played a prominent part in the instruction of the Malay children in their school. In 1854 Dr Camilleri resigned his position citing in a letter to the General Secretary of the SPG ill-health on the part of his wife and himself, fears for their safety and difficulty coping with the heat in the Cape.  He did not leave however, without expressing his view that, in future missionary work should be kept separate from the parochial work of the Church, and expressing his hope that people in England would be kind enough to provide funding for two or three missionaries 'under the Bishop of Cape Town, but independent of his funds.' (Mayson, Cape Malays, p33.)

On his return to England in 1855 Dr Camilleri's movements are not clear. It is known that he  became a Curate at St Deny's, Stanford-in-the-Vale, Farringdon, Berks and according to Crockford's  Clerical Directory this appointment took place in 1858. It was while he was Curate at St Deny's that Dr Camilleri's linguistic and evangelical abilities were employed by the Anglo-Continental Society on a secretive mission to Italy. The aim of the Anglo-Continental Society was primarily to make the principals of the Anglican Church more widely known in Europe and around the world and encourage reform of other churches. As an Italian speaker, Dr Camilleri was sent to Italy to encourage reformation within the Catholic Church and through the distribution of the Society's publications and Italian prayer books, to demonstrate the limitations of the Papacy and promote the idea of a unified Catholic-Protestant Church which would maintain Catholic faith and dogma, while rejecting 'Papal usurpation and dogma.'

Dr Camilleri spent five months in Italy over the winter of 1860-61. Naturally, the mission was a delicate one, not least because of Dr Camilleri's status as an apostate Catholic priest, and it necessitated some secrecy. Although he kept a journal of his Italian mission, the Anglo-Continental Society chose not to publish it, in order to protect those with whom Dr Camilleri had communicated and to prevent them being compromised. Camilleri did however, give a talk on the religious condition of Italy in September 1861 at the Mechanics Institute in Winchester. An article in the Hampshire Chronicle, Southampton and Isle of Wight Courrier of 21st September 1861, reported Dr Camilleri's views as to the current state of religious feeling in Italy, which were somewhat bleak. 'He stated, upon the authority of several persons of standing in that country, that the prevailing condition of the people is utter indifference, and that the priesthood and laity are thoroughly and almost hopelessly alienated from one another, and that the cathedral establishments in Italy are productive of great evil....that the celibacy of the clergy is an almost insuperable barrier between the priests and their flocks...that the people despise and ridicule their pastors; and that the prospects of religion seem at first sight most discouraging.' Dr Camilleri further reported that he 'obtained more encouragement' from English Chaplains and that he 'came into contact with some intelligent priests and laymen.'

All in all, it would seem that his mission to Italy was not particularly successful and his views have to be weighed against Dr Camilleri's clear bias against the Catholic Church in which he was brought up. The relative lack of success of his Italian mission did not prevent Camilleri from continuing his interest in the work of the Anglo-Continental Society and its aims. In 1867 he published a treatise in Italian entitled 'L'Unita della Chiesa' (The United Church). Furthermore, in the Second Edition of a magazine called 'What Is the Continental Society?' published in 1879, Dr Camilleri is listed as one of the Editors of the Society's publication, although he is erroneously described as being Italian.

Dr Camilleri's last posting was as Vicar of Lyford at Wantage, Oxfordshire, where he was appointed in 1863 and remained for thirty-four years until his retirement in 1897. His chosen place of retirement was Weymouth in Dorset and he remained active, as in 1902 he contributed to a book compiled by C.S. Isaacson, 'Roads from Rome: a Series of Personal Narratives.' In his contribution he gave an account of his life, both as a Catholic priest and as Anglican Minister. Among other achievements Dr Camilleri translated the Book of Common Prayer & the New Testament into Maltese, to some acclaim.

After a long and eventful life spanning 89 years and including at least one visit to Holy Trinity Nice, Michel Angelo Camilleri died at his house 'Melita', No.5 Kirrleton Avenue, Weymouth in 1903. He clearly had no regrets about his conversion (or as he described it his 'transition' to the Protestant faith) as in writing about it in his contribution C.S. Isaacson's book he stated, 'I trust this book to which I am contributing will do good and will enlighten the eyes of those who think too well of the Papacy. There can be no more fascinating ritual than that of the Roman Church, but one day will show (sic) the awful abyss into which she is drifting.'

Perhaps, more than a century on and amidst the awful abuse scandals in which the Catholic Church is mired, that day has finally and sadly come.  

Dr Camilleri's translation into Maltese of the Book of Common Prayer