Tos

Father Aldo J. Tos

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Father Aldo J. Tos, who twice served as a pastor and also was an educator at three high schools in the archdiocese, died Sept. 20. He was 86.

A Funeral Mass was offered Sept. 26 at Holy Cross Church. Auxiliary Bishop Gerald T. Walsh was the celebrant; Father Robert J. Robbins, pastor of Our Saviour and administrator of St. Stephen and Our Lady of the Scapular in Manhattan, was the homilist.

Father Tos served as pastor of St. Joseph’s-Greenwich Village from 1986 until his retirement in 2003.

At St. Joseph’s he presided over an early 1990s restoration of the parish’s beautiful 1833 Greek Revival church building on Sixth Avenue which, among other things, reconstructed the altar, installed a new baptismal font and gave new life to a fresco patterned after Raphael’s “Transfiguration.”

A 1990 CNY feature on the parish evangelization committee at St. Joseph’s quoted Father Tos as saying the parish was seeking “to present the message of Jesus Christ and show how it’s lived in this community of St. Joseph’s.”

“We have clearly said that the focus of the evangelization committee is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the person of Jesus Christ,” he said.

He also was pastor of St. Patrick’s on Staten Island, 1976-1986.

“He was a pastor at two parishes, and he was well loved by everyone,” Father Robbins told CNY.

Father Robbins was a student of Father Tos’ at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, where Father Tos was a teacher from 1963 to 1969.

Father Tos also taught at Msgr. Farrell High School on Staten Island, 1969-1976, and Our Lady of Lourdes High School, 1960-1963.

He held a master’s degree and a doctorate in education from The Catholic University of America.

“He was a very bright man, very demanding, the ultimate teacher,” he said. “He was inspirational to the students, even to the point that my graduating class had six go on to Cathedral College.”

“Besides my parents and my family, he would be the strongest influence in my life,” he said. “He was definitely great with the kids.”

As a priest, he said, “He knew at a very young age that he wanted to be a priest.” Father Tos entered Cathedral College right after he himself graduated from high school.

He was parochial vicar at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Poughkeepsie, 1957-1960, and did a summer assignment after his ordination in 1953 at St. John’s, Clove.

Born in New York City, he attended Holy Cross Elementary School and Cardinal Hayes High School. He studied for the priesthood at Cathedral College and St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie.

Burial followed in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Hawthorne.

Father Aldo J. Tos