Archbishop of Honiara
Archbishop Christopher Michael Cardone, Archbishop of Honiara, was born on December 20, 1957, at Long Island, in New York and in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. After primary and middle school in New York he went on to Providence College, the Dominican college in Rhode Island, and he made his religious profession in the Order of Friars Preachers on August 15, 1981. He completed his studies at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington and was ordained a priest on May 30, 1986. He served as parochial vicar at Madeira, in Cincinnati, Ohio, from 1986 to 1988, and in 1988 he was transferred to the Dominican vicariate in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where he carried out pastoral service in several parishes of the Diocese of Gizo until 1995 and was vicar general from 1992 to 1994. He was recalled to the United States from 1994 to 1995 and then sent back to the Solomon Islands, where he was parish priest and director of vocations from 1995 to 2000, and from 2000 parish priest at Nila and a part-time teacher at the community high school of Tuha. On March 27, 2001, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Gizo and Titular Bishop of Thuburnica. He received episcopal ordination on June 9, 2001, at Gizo, with Bernard Cyril O'Grady as principal consecrator and Brian James Barnes and Eusebius John Crawford as co-consecrators. On October 19, 2004, he was appointed Bishop of Auki. On June 22, 2016, he was appointed Archbishop of Honiara, and he was installed on September 10, 2016.