In January 1959 he was offered the honorary abbotship of Poh Ern Shih, thus becoming the first Westerner to be the abbot of a Buddhist temple in Singapore [REF].
In December 1959, Pitt embarked on the task of translating the Ksitigarbha Bodhisattva Sutra from Chinese to English at Poh Ern Shih, so that it would be accessible to the English-educated.