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John Cani, the Italian priest who became the first Bishop of Rockhampton in 1882, was born in Castel Bolognese in the province of Emilia in northern Italy on December 22, 1834.
In 1856 he went to Rome as a student at the Roman Seminary where he gained a doctorate in divinity at age twenty-one. After ordination he turned his back on a possible career in Rome, joining the small missionary band who sailed from Gravesend England, on 8 December 1860 on the ship Donald McKay. Among those whom Father Cani travelled to Queensland with were, the state’s first bishop, Irishman James Quinn (who later called himself O’Quinn) and Mother Vincent Whitty, also from Ireland, who established the Sisters of Mercy in Queensland. They arrived in Brisbane on 12 March 1861.
Father Cani's first appointment was to Warwick, after which he was appointed Vicar General, administrator and secretary to Bishop Quinn. In 1877 he was appointed Pro-Vicar Apostolic in Cooktown and still preparing for the New Guinea mission, when on 21 May 1882, he was appointed Bishop of Rockhampton. He was consecrated bishop at St Mary’s, Sydney by Archbishop Roger Bede Vaughan and installed on 11 June 1882.
Bishop Cani was a visionary and commenced on a great cathedral in the bush. Unfortunately, various obstacles emerged, and hard as he tried, (as did several of his successors in the See of Rockhampton) he did not succeed in completing the task. The Cathedral of St Joseph in Rockhampton was finally completed by Bishop Bernard Wallace, the eighth bishop of Rockhampton at a cost of more than $1 million in 1982, the centenary year of the diocese. (The Papal Bulla actually established the diocese in the dying stages of 1881, but the Centenary celebrations were held in 1982 - one hundred years after the first Bishop - Bishop John Cani - was installed as Bishop of Rockhampton in 1882.)
Bishop Cani died on March 3 1898 and was buried in the South Rockhampton Cemetery. Three years later his remains were removed to St Joseph’s Cathedral and an inscribed stone marks his last resting place. |
