David Cappo
Officer of the Order of Australia
David Cappo AO (born 2 November 1949) is an Australian social justice advocate and Roman Catholic priest with particular interest in mental health care in developing countries. He is based in Adelaide, South Australia and Kampala, Uganda.
Cappo was previously the Social Inclusion Commissioner for the State of South Australia and later advised the Australian government on social policy and mental health reform. In 2007, he was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for service to social inclusion in South Australia.
Cappo is currently co-founder and Chief Executive of YouBelong, a Ugandan-registered non-profit organisation working to strengthen fragile health systems and shift the focus of mental health care from institutional-based care to family and community-centred care.
Early life and career
Cappo was born in Adelaide and educated at St Joseph's Primary School at Kingswood and at Rostrevor College.
While completing a Bachelor of Arts in Social Work at the South Australian Institute of Technology (now University of South Australia), Cappo worked as a community welfare officer in the areas of child protection, family support and juvenile offending.
Cappo was ordained a Catholic Priest in 1984, served as parish priest of Hectorville, South Australia, from 1996 to 2000 and became Vicar General of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide in 2000. In 2003 he was made a Prelate of Honour by Pope John Paul II, an appointment accompanied by the title of Monsignor.
Government appointments
The then South Australian Premier Mike Rann appointed Cappo Chair of South Australia's Social Inclusion Board in 2002 and Social Inclusion Commissioner in 2006.
“David Cappo” enters the record as officer of the Order of Australia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Cappo and Officer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“David Cappo” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, David, Cappo and Officer provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5232149. The first chronological checks are 1949, 2007, 1984 and 1996.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “David Cappo”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow David Cappo primary sources, David Cappo archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “David Cappo”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “David Cappo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.