CANALI, LUIGI DA PARMA

CANALI, LUIGI da PARMA. — Minister General of the Friars Minor and titular archbishop of Ptolemais, born in Parma on 9 February 1836, died there on 22 April 1905. He entered the Franciscan Order in the province of the Most Holy Redeemer of Bologna in 1852, was ordained a priest in 1858, and taught philosophy and theology from 1860 to 1866, that is, until the suppression of the convents. He then devoted himself to preaching and to the pastoral care of the parish of the Most Holy Nun-

of Parma. Once the religious province had been reconstituted, he became its first provincial minister from 1882 to 1889, and at the general Chapter held in Rome on 3 October 1889 he was elected minister general of the Order. He inaugurated the College of St. Anthony in Rome (1890) and visited many provinces as well as the Holy Land, but his greatest merit lay in preparing the union of the various families of his Order, proclaimed and sanctioned by Leo XIII with the bull Felicitate quadam of 4 October 1897. He then withdrew to his Province, which elected him minister once again in 1900. The following year he was raised to the archiepiscopal dignity and shortly afterward, on 14 September of the same year, the appointment to the see of Reggio Emilia was officially communicated to him from Rome; he immediately declined it because of poor health and advanced age. In 1904 he was again apostolic visitor of the dioceses of Milan, Como, and Lodi. His noble character, affability, and prudence in government had won him everyone’s esteem. In addition to various discourses on studies, the Immaculate Conception, St. Bonaventure, etc., and the official encyclicals, he published a Vita del b. Giovanni da Parma (Quaracchi 1900); Da Roma a Gerusalemme (Vanves presso Parigi 1894; trad. francese, ivi 1894).