Bishop William Joensen and co-host Jeanne Thill welcome Father Ross Caniglia — a former television meteorologist turned Catholic priest and published composer — for a conversation about weather, music, suffering, and the winding path to a vocation. A Council Bluffs native and Creighton graduate, Father Caniglia worked as an on-air meteorologist in Sioux City before entering seminary in 2013, and he now serves as pastor of Our Lady of the Plains Parish in the Diocese of Sioux City. He joins the show on the day he is honored at the Diocese of Des Moines Bishop's Celebration of Education. Storm chasing, forecasting, and why weather still opens newscasts The high school voice injury that reshaped his life's plan Reading Augustine's Confessions at Creighton and the awakening that followed Composing the Mass of the Epiphany — six years from first note to publication Bishop Joensen on Saints Monica and Augustine, confirmations, and the new school year
Bishop Joensen and Jeanne Thill open with high school football underway across the diocese — Valley and Dowling played the night before — and September weather moving in. The Bishop previews the Bishop's Celebration of Education, held that evening at the Catholic Pastoral Center in downtown Des Moines, lifting up all 16 Catholic schools in the diocese alongside the Catholic Tuition Organization (CTO). Father Ross Caniglia is the evening's honored speaker.
The Bishop also runs through his week: confirmations at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Indianola and Sacred Heart Parish in West Des Moines; a deanery gathering of priests at St. Edward Church in Afton, near Creston; another deanery meeting at Ss. Peter and Paul Parish in Atlantic; and Catechesis of the Good Shepherd programs underway there and at St. Mary Parish in Shenandoah, where Father Jason Lee is pastor. He shares a lunch conversation with Bishop Ambrose Puthenveettil of the Diocese of Kottapuram in Kerala, India, and notes the Dowling Catholic All-School Mass, where students recognized Father David Polich on his 50th anniversary of ordination — Father Polich was ordained for the Diocese of Des Moines in 1976.
On the memorials of Saints Monica and Augustine, Bishop Joensen reflects on Monica's wisdom despite little formal education, and her consolation for parents whose children have wandered from the faith: those who are seeking and have not yet found are not without God. He closes the segment with Augustine on preaching — that the words of any preacher sound empty unless the inner Master, Christ himself, is teaching within the listener.
Segment two: Council Bluffs, weather, and a chalkboard forecast
Father Caniglia was born in 1988 and raised in Council Bluffs, one of four children, including an identical twin brother now living in the Omaha area. His mother worked as a nurse; his father practiced law in Council Bluffs. Both parents remain active in their parish and in Serra vocations work. His parents, Phil and Rena, are described by Bishop Joensen as pillars of the faith in the Council Bluffs community.
His mother — a former All-State violinist who grew up in Boone — introduced him to the family piano, which had come from his grandmother's house. He sang in show choir and concert choir at St. Albert in Council Bluffs under a longtime Council Bluffs music teacher who had built the vocal program from the ground up, and he continued piano lessons through college.
The weather obsession started in fifth grade, watching WOWT 6 News in Omaha. He kept a chalkboard in his bedroom, drew Iowa and Nebraska with fronts and high-pressure symbols, and delivered forecasts to his patient parents. Classmates asked him for snow-day predictions. After graduating from Creighton University in 2010, he went storm chasing with a graduate student and watched a large tornado pass roughly a quarter mile away.
He worked as a television meteorologist in Sioux City from 2010 to 2013, hired into the weekend weather shift while also doing news reporting midweek and filling in on weekday shows. He explains the newsroom hierarchy — weekday evenings first, weekday mornings second, weekends last — and notes that weather has migrated to the top of newscasts because ratings show it is the number one reason people tune in.
The voice injury and the turn toward God
Late in his senior year of high school, after years of heavy singing, Father Caniglia developed voice issues affecting both speaking and singing. He describes it plainly as a season of suffering — physical and mental — that carried into college and left him unable to sing as he once could. He still deals with it to a degree today. The disruption cracked open the plan he thought he had: meteorology, settled and certain. In its place came questions about God's existence, the purpose of life, and what he was actually for.
Segment three: Augustine at Creighton, Trinity Heights, and seminary
The turn came in a philosophy class at Creighton, where he read Augustine's Confessions as a sophomore — a spiritual awakening he credits as the impetus for taking a possible priestly vocation seriously. Bishop Joensen shares his own connection: he once led a January-term course to Sicily and Rome, always stopping at Ostia to read aloud, from a window ledge, the passage where Monica and Augustine speak of ultimate things and Monica sets aside her fear of death.
Living and working in Sioux City shaped which diocese was calling him. He points to the example of good preaching and evident love for the faith among the priests around him, including Father Gary Snyder, and to his parents' steady insistence on doing the small things and persevering. A turning point came at Trinity Heights in Sioux City, where a colleague from the television station — someone who had drifted from his faith — first brought him. The beauty of the place moved him, and he asked someone there for the name of a spiritual director. He entered seminary in 2013.
Bishop Joensen offers a direct invitation to listeners: if that Augustinian restlessness is stirring in your own heart, it may be God inviting you toward priesthood, religious life, or another form of service to God's people.
Composing the Mass of the Epiphany
Father Caniglia composes as time and inspiration allow, usually beginning from a text — scriptural, or from the Church's own liturgical texts — and then finding chords and vocal lines at the piano. His Mass of the Epiphany, published by GIA Publications, began by accident while he was practicing for a Mass in seminary and a melody surfaced out of a music theory exercise. It took six years to complete, and was his first composition. Bishop Joensen praises the brass writing in the Great Doxology.
Learn more about Father Caniglia's Mass setting at GIAmusic.com
Diocese of Sioux City: scdiocese.org
Diocese of Des Moines: dmdiocese.org
Catholic Tuition Organization: ctoiowa.org
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Making It Personal with Bishop William Joensen is made possible by Serra Vocations Ministry, and by the Serra Clubs of Central Iowa and Council Bluffs — whose prayers, witness, and encouragement continue to bear fruit in vocations to the priesthood, religious life, and the diaconate.
Learn more at JoinSerra.org
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