He was born Luigi Carlo Giovanni Giuseppe Publio Caruana in Floriana, in what was then the Crown Colony of Malta, part of the British Empire.

In 1876, at the age of nine, he was admitted to the minor seminary of the Diocese of Gozo, and a year later he pursued his studies at St. Ignatius College in St. Julian's, administered by the Jesuit Fathers.

In 1899 he was appointed a parish priest at Dornie, western Ross-shire, in the Scottish Highlands, for which he learned Gaelic to care for a widely scattered flock.

He was consecrated at the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere by the Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val on 10 February that year.

"There is no other alternative", he said, "for all right-thinking men faced with the evidence of the inherent barbarity of the enemy, his anti-Christian temper, his persecution of religion, his contempt for the laws of civilization and his savage extermination of the Jews."

He thanked the men of the merchant and Royal navies, and the R.A.F., for their courage and devotion.Caruana died during World War II, after he had led the island through the Siege of Malta by the Nazi Luftwaffe.