De Catanzaro, Carmino
1916 - 1983
Carmino Joseph de Catanzara, academic and cleric, was born in Brooklyn NY in 1916, the son of an
Italian father, Giuseppe de Catanzara and a Danish mother, Elva Svenningsen. After the death of his
father in 1919 he was educated in Copenhagen and Yarmouth, NS. He attended King's College and
Dalhousie University (MA 1938), Keble College, Oxford, and Trinity College, Toronto. where he taught,
first as lecturer, then as Assistant Professor, from 1945 to 1959. In 1947 he received his PhD from the
University of Toronto. After some years he resigned and became associated with the Anglican Catholic
Church of Canada, becoming Bishop in 1980.
Bishop de Catanzara's interests included church music and ecumenical relations. He was a founding
member of the Gregorian Association of Canada, and took part in theological conferences between
Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox and Old Catholics. He was a member of the editorial
board of the American Church Quarterly and produced the first English version of the Gnostic Gospel
According to Philip from the Coptic.
In 1944 he married Joan Needham, a graduate of St. Hilda's College. The couple had six children:
Gregory (1945-1965), Rosemary (b.1948), Christine (b.1949), Denys Anthony (b.1951) and Philip Mark
and Nicholas Michael (b.1954). He died in Ottawa on June 23, 1983.
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