CATALDO, GIUSEPPE M. BENIAMINO. - Distinguished Jesuit missionary, b. at Terrasini (Palermo) on 17 March 1837, entered the novitiate in 1852. Driven out of Sicily by the revolution of 1860, he was assigned two years later to the missions of the Rocky Mountains and went to Boston to complete his theological studies, but sickly from childhood and now declared by the doctors to be in advanced physical decline, he soon had to seek the milder climate of California.
It is therefore all the more astonishing to see him begin in 1865 his long career of hardships and exertions as a missionary to the Blackrobes in the Rocky Mountains. His tenacity obtained numerous conversions among the Coeur d'Alenes, the Nez Perces and the Spokanes; his peacemaking intervention was greatly appreciated when war broke out in 1877 between the Nez Perce Indians and the American government. Superior of the whole mission in 1877, he remained there until 1893, extending its field with various foundations, especially in the city of Spokane, which regards him as its founder and owes much of its development to him. There he erected, among other things, Gonzaga College (a university from 1912). Having left the government of the mission, he passed from one post to another, as visitor and then as a simple missionary in Alaska (a mission that he himself had obtained for his Order from the hands of Msgr. Seghers), pastor of the Italians at San José (California), in charge of various Indian stations, despite the infirmities of age (the Indians called him "metatoponim": thrice broken, because he had broken leg and arm three times and walked on crutches).
The celebrations of his 90th anniversary and of his 75th year of religious life had wide resonance in the United States. D. at Pendleton on 9 Apr. 1928.
BIBL.: sources