Nazzareno Camilleri

Twenty-one years after Camilleri’s death, in 1994, the Salesians began the process for his canonisation. The so-called Evidential Statements of Witness to his heroic virtues were published in 1989. Camilleri bears the title of Venerable.

He died in Rome in 1973, in aura sanctitatis (in fame of holiness). He was buried at the Cemetery of Genzano in Rome within the chapel of the Salesians.

At the close of that academic year (1964–65), the whole of the Turin branch of the university was assimilated by the Rome branch. Thus Camilleri continued to teach at Salesian Pontifical University in Rome for another year, retiring from his teaching profession due to ill health in 1966..

After the end of the war, Camilleri was back at Turin as Dean of the Faculty of Theology at the Salesian Pontifical University. He stayed in this office for nine years (1945–54), teaching dogmatic theology and asceticism. Afterwards, at the same university, he taught at the Institute of Pedagogy and Religious Studies (later, in 1956, called the Faculty of Educational Sciences) eleven years, up till 1965.

In 1940, when Italy entered World War II on the Axis side, Camilleri was interned, since, as a Maltese citizen, he was a British subject. He spent the war period in the north of Italy, first at Chieri (1940–42), then at Montalenghe (1942–45). At Chieri he was Director of the Salesian theology students; at Montalenghe, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy.

Camilleri stayed there for two years, until 1937. He was afterwards sent to teach moral theology at the Don Bosco International Institute at the Crocetta, Turin. Here he stayed for another two years, at the end of which he successfully completed his doctorate in theology.

He studied there up till 1926, when subsequently he was enrolled at the Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome to pursue his institutional studies for the priesthood. There he successfully completed his philosophy (1926–29) and theology (1931–35) courses. Between the two (1929–31), he was sent for a short stint to Sicily to teach at San Gregorio di Catania. He was ordained a priest in Malta in 1934.

Between September 1923 and February 1973 (nine days before his death), Camilleri held a diary which was never intended to be published or even read by others. Its Italian publishers call it Diario Intimo (Intimate Journal). Unfortunately, only short extracts of this remarkable document have ever been published. It runs over twenty-eight registers containing in all some four thousand pages. They are held at the archives of the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome.

Nazzareno Camilleri (1906–1973) was a Maltese philosopher, theologian, and mystic. His areas of specialisation in philosophy were chiefly metaphysics and pedagogy.

Camilleri was born at Sliema, Malta, on 10 November 1906. Since his family lived very close to the Salesian oratory there, he was familiar with the Salesians from a very tender age. He joined them at the young age of fifteen, in 1921, and immediately sent to Sicily to continue his studies at San Gregorio di Catania.