Father Alexander Diomedi was born in Italy on May 10, 1843. He studied both in both Rome and at St. Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Center in Wales between 1861 and 1874, during which time he was ordained. Following his ordination, he was sent to America as a volunteer for the Rocky Mountain Indian Mission along with two other Fathers. The trio landed in New York and proceeded to travel to St. Louis, Missouri, where they purchased the printing press that would become the first to be used in the Rocky Mountain Missions. When Father Diomedi arrived in what is now St. Ignatius, Montana, the location of his first mission, he found he had a proclivity for the local language, Kalispel, and had soon overseen the printing the first complete Kalispel dictionary. In 1875 he was transferred to the Sacred Heart Mission near Cataldo, Idaho, where he was appointed as the Superior of the Mission. When the U.S. government acted to remove the local Coeur D’Alene tribe from their rightful lands to a reservation, Father Diomedi used his familiarity with the tribe to influence them to move against their will. By 1885 he had been transferred to Lewiston, Idaho, where he established the first Catholic school in the town. He was then transferred around Idaho and Montana several times before being appointed as the Spiritual Father at Gonzaga College in Spokane, Washington, in 1895, and then as the Superior of Seattle. In 1899 he was sent to the mission in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to establish a Jesuit college, where he stayed for three years. He then returned to the Pacific Northwest and California for several more years until, in 1929, he was allowed to retire and sent to Port Townsend, Washington, where he passed away on December 31, 1932.