The Reverend Fr. Francis A. Cacciola was born in Brooklyn, New York on 23 April 1870. His mother came from Morel, PEI and his father from Brooklyn, New York. Shortly after graduating from high school, he began work with a commercial business in New York, and had been working there for about 10 years when he resigned to pursue a course of study for the priesthood.

He did his course of studies in philosophy at St. Joseph’s University, Memramcook, New Brunswick, and his studies in theology, and the other sacred sciences, in the Grande Seminaire Universite in Quebec. With his studies completed, he travelled to Charlottetown, PEI, and shortly after arriving there was ordained to the order of Subdeacon. A couple of weeks later he was ordained to the order of Deacon, and finally to the order of Priest on 2 August 1903, by the Most Reverend Charles MacDonald, Bishop of Charlottetown. All three ordinations took place in St. Dunstan‘s Cathedral.

Fr. Cacciola celebrated his first Mass in the Convent of Notre Dame in Charlottetown on the 3rd of August, and his first mass in the United States in St. Martin’s Church, Somersworth, New Hampshire on the 8th. The next day he celebrated his first Solemn High Mass in St. Agnes Church in Brooklyn.

In 1905 he was accepted by Bishop MF Howley for work in the Archdiocese of St. Johns. His first appointment was as a curate in the Cathedral Parish in St. Johns, and remained there for about a year. At the time of leaving there, he was appointed as a curate in Assumption Parish in St. Kyran’s with residence in Bar Haven, and worked under these arrangements until 1913. With the division of the parish boundaries in 1914, and the erection of a new parish, St. Francis Xavier, Bar Haven, he was appointed as the first parish priest of the new parish, a title he held until his retirement in 1953.

During the years he was pastor of St. Francis Xavier parish he built a new parish church in Bar Haven. As well he also built several chapels and schools in the outlying missions of the parish. Being a robust type of person it is alleged that it was not uncommon for him to take a plunge in the icy water, even in winter time. During the years of the economic depression in the 1930s, those who knew him became well aware of his generosity to the poor, to the point that it was known for him to give away his coat, or some other article of clothing he was wearing at the time, to some needy person whom he judged was in greater need of it than he, himself.

Fr. Cacciola had a great popularity with the people and clergy of all denominations in the district where he worked. At the time of his retirement from parish ministry at age 83 in 1953, he took up residence as Chaplain to Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s. With the decline in his health, arrangements were made for him to move to St. Patrick’s Mercy home, where he died on 22nd December 1957, in the 87th year of his age, and in the 55th year of his priesthood. Interment in the priest’s plot in Belvidere cemetery.

From the book “Lives Recalled” by Monsignor Francis Coady