In summer, 1860, Cataldo and all other Jesuits were expelled from Sicily following Garibaldi's conquest of the island. While in Rome, he personally requested Jesuit General Peter Beckx to send him to the mission fields of North America. Beckx must have concurred, for he assigned Cataldo to study theology--and French & English in his spare time--at the seminary in Louvain, Belgium, which specialized in preparing missionaries.
After his ordination in 1862, the now Father Cataldo was immediately transferred to a new Jesuit seminary in Boston, to learn English and complete his theology studies. His brief time of residence there occurred about two years before the official opening of Boston College. The cold New England winter reactivated his tuberculosis, so he was sent to sunny California the following spring to regain his health. With the American Civil War still raging, and completion of the transcontinental railroad yet six years in the future, Cataldo had to take a roundabout route by boat and overland transverse across the Isthmus of Panama. He finally arrived in San Francisco on May 28, 1863.
