The Reverend

Monsignor Monsignor (; ) is a form of address or title for certain members of the clergy in the Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" can be abbreviated as Mons.... or Msgr. In some ...

Carlos Cuarteroni (19 September 1816 – 12 March 1880), Carlos Domingo Antonio Fernandez Genaro Cuarteroni was a Spanish mariner who later became a priest and established the first Roman Catholic missions in northern

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

.Crowned with the Stars
(2005) by Mike Gibby

Biography

Born in Cadiz to an Italian father and Spanish mother, Carlos went to sea at 13. He was based in the Philippines and built up his experience on the route between Manila and

Macao Macau or Macao is a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most densely populated region in the world. Formerly a Portuguese colony, the ter ...

until he became a full captain in 1841. By February 1844, Carlos bought a 146-ton topsail schooner, Il Martiri de Tunkin. He set out to find and salvage valuable cargo from the wreck of the ''Christina''. He succeeded, surrendered (after some delay) the treasure to its insurers in Hong Kong, and was well rewarded. He undertook several voyages in the islands south and east of the Philippines, during which he freed several slaves and did some evangelising. He became more interested in missionary work and went back to Europe for support and training. In 1855, he was appointed Priest Apostolic to Borneo by the Pope and left for the east in 1856 with two Italian priests to assist him. The mission was welcomed in

Labuan Labuan (), officially the Federal Territory of Labuan (), is an island federal territory of Malaysia. It includes and six smaller islands off the coast of the state of Sabah in East Malaysia. Labuan's capital is Victoria, which is best kno ...

in 1857 and established stations in

Brunei Brunei, officially Brunei Darussalam, is a country in Southeast Asia, situated on the northern coast of the island of Borneo. Apart from its coastline on the South China Sea, it is completely surrounded by the Malaysian state of Sarawak, with ...

and at Looc Porin (near where

Kota Kinabalu Kota Kinabalu (; formerly known as Jesselton), colloquially referred to as KK, is the state capital of Sabah, Malaysia. It is also the capital of the Kota Kinabalu District as well as the West Coast Division of Sabah. The city is located on the ...

is now). However, problems with his assistants left him alone from 1860, and the mission made little progress. Cuarteron, already ill, resigned his post in Rome in December 1879, then returned to his sister's home in Cadiz, where he died of pneumonia on 12 March 1880.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cuarteron, Carlos 1816 births 1880 deaths 19th-century Spanish Roman Catholic priests Spanish Roman Catholic missionaries Roman Catholic missionaries in Malaysia Roman Catholic missionaries in Brunei Deaths from pneumonia in Spain Spanish people of Italian descent