CATALDO, GIUSEPPE M. BENIAMINO. - Distinguished Jesuit missionary, b. at Terrasini (Palermo) on 17 March 1837, entered the novitiate in 1852. Driven from Sicily by the revolution of 1860, he was assigned two years later to the Rocky Mountain missions and went to Boston to complete his theological studies, but, having been sickly since childhood and now declared by doctors to be advanced in consumption, he soon had to seek the milder climate of California.
His subsequent career is all the more remarkable for his beginning in 1865 a long life of hardship as a missionary among the Native Americans of the Rocky Mountains. His perseverance won numerous conversions among the Coeur d’Alene, the Nez Percé, and the Spokane; his pacifying intervention was highly valued when war broke out in 1877 between the Nez Percé and the American government. Superior of the entire mission in 1877, he remained there until 1893, extending its scope through various foundations, especially in the city of Spokane, which regards him as its founder and owes much of its development to him. Among other things, the Gonzaga College (a university since 1912) grew there. After relinquishing leadership of the mission, he moved from place to place—visitor and then simple missionary in Alaska (a mission he had received for his Order from the hands of Bp. Seghers), parish priest of Italians at San José (California), and in charge of various Indian stations, despite his advanced age (the Native Americans called him “metacopnium”; he had broken three times, because he had broken his leg and arm three times and walked with crutches).
The celebrations of his 90th birthday and his 75th anniversary of religious life met with wide acclaim in the United States. D. at Pendleton on 9 April 1928.