CATTANI, GAETANO MARIA. - Bishop, born at Modena on 12 Sept. 1793, died there on 28 Jan. 1863. Of austere and firm character, cultivated, pious, and charitable, having embraced the ecclesiastical career and honourably held curial offices, he was raised to the episcopal see of Carpi, where he proved an affectionate pastor and a zealous defender of the rights and prerogatives of the Church against the prevailing secularist jurisdictionalism.
An Italian of the old school, with deeply rooted legitimist sentiments and most devoted to the Holy See, C., together with many other contemporaries, discerned in the reforming movements of his time the snares and ambiguities of French revolutionary stamp, in open conflict with the inherited cultural and social patrimony. Thus, having come into conflict with the Piedmontese government, he first found himself deprived of the revenues of the episcopal mensa; then, despite his advanced age, he was, together with other worthy brethren, illegally seized by night and imprisoned. This indeed broke his now weary strength, but not his apostolically indomitable spirit.