Joseph Portelli was born on the small island of Gozo, off the coast north of Malta, in 1949. He was educated at the Sacred Heart Seminary in Gozo where he was ordained for Parish work in the Gozo Diocese. Fr Poertelli was loaned to the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh in Scotland in 1976 and immediately suffered a period of severe ill health requiring hospitalisation for a long time relating to kidney failure. This period of ill health lasted until 1981 when he was still frail, but at last able to enter Parish work in Scotland.

Fr Portelli's first parish here in Scotland was at St Patrick's Kilsyth where he arrived in 1981 as assistant Priest to Fr Denis O'Connell who was Parish Priest in Kilsyth at this time. During this period he many many friends and was assidious in visiting the sick of the parish with whom he had much empathy and much in common, despite remaining quite frail himself and still attending hospital regularly. It was a during this time that Fr Portelli befriended Bernard Gordon who was a parishioner who had suffered repeated brian surgery and who had a litany of medical complications. This was a friendship which was to last until Bernard's death some years later.

In 1982 Fr Portelli was transferred as assistant Priest to St Ninian's Edinburgh where he was to stay for 2 years, 1982 and 1983. A further period as assistant Priest came after this for 3 years at St Francis Xavier's Falkirk from 1983 to 1985.

In 1985 Fr Portelli was incardinated into the Archdiocese of St Andrew's and Edinburgh, thus ending his period of loan from Gozo and making him a permanent Priest of St Andrews and Edinburgh.

Fr Portelli then spent 1985 to 1988 as assistant Priest at Our Lady of the Waves at Dunbar in East Lothian followed by a number of years at the Parsih of St Pius X in Kirkcaldy. Fr Portelli has for many years now been the Parish Priest of St Agatha's Methil, in Fife.