AustLit

‘The Grand Experiment’ was the Spanish Benedictine monk Rosendo Salvado’s decision to take two Aboriginal boys, eleven-year-old Joannes Maria Dirimera and seven-year-old Francis Xavier Conaci, from Western Australia to Rome in January 1849. His intention was for them to train for the priesthood so that they could evangelise their own people. As an early attempt to ‘Aboriginalise’ an arm of the Catholic Church in Australia, it might be regarded as being a bold and far-sighted idea at the time. In reality, it was a complete disaster. Both boys contracted undiagnosed but fatal diseases, Conaci dying in Rome in October 1853 and Dirimera a few months after his return to Western Australia in August 1855. Three more boys who were subsequently despatched to Europe also died, as did all the young Aboriginal girls sent to the Mercy Convent in Perth. Another boy from New Norcia, Upumera, had died in early 1848 on the voyage to Europe with Salvado’s Catalan colleague, José Serra.'  (Introduction)