BY ALBERT AMATEAU | Father Aldo J. Tos, who served as pastor of St. Joseph’s Church in Greenwich Village for 18 years until he retired in 2003, died Sept 21. He was 86.
As pastor of St. Joseph’s, he presided more than 10 years ago over the restoration of the 1833 Greek Revival-style church building at Sixth Ave. and Washington Place. The restoration included an altar reconstruction, a new baptismal font and the restoration of a fresco mural patterned after Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” according to an obituary in Catholic New York, the newspaper of the New York Archdiocese.
Tos had a distinguished career as an educator in addition to his pastoral services. From 1963 to 1969 he taught at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx where he was chairperson of the religion department. He then taught at Monsignor Farrell High School on Staten Island from 1969 to 1986. Earlier, he taught at Our Lady of Lourdes High School in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., from 1960 to 1963.
At Father Tos’s funeral at Holy Cross Church on W. 42nd St. on Sept. 26, Father Robert. J. Robbins, pastor at Our Savior Church in Midtown and a student of Tos’s at Spellman, recalled Tos as “the ultimate teacher,” who inspired many of his students to go on to study for the priesthood.
Born on Manhattan’s West Side to immigrant parents from northern Italy, Aldo Tos knew as a boy that he wanted to be a priest. He attended Holy Cross Elementary School, went on to Cardinal Hayes High School and, after graduating from Hayes, studied for the priesthood at Cathedral College. He then attended St. Joseph’s Seminary and was ordained in 1953.
Tos was appointed curate of the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Poughkeepsie in 1957 and served there until he became a teacher at Lourdes High School in 1960. At the same time he served as adjunct professor of religious studies at Marist College in Poughkeepsie. He had also been an adjunct professor at Loyola University in Chicago and at Fordham University in the Bronx.
Tos earned a Ph.D. in the philosophy of education from Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and pursued post-doctoral studies in biblical theology and scripture at Union Theological Seminary (Protestant) and General Theological Seminary (Episcopalian).
His first assignment as a pastor was St. Patrick’s Church in Richmond, Staten Island, where he served for about 10 years until 1986, when he came to St. Joseph’s in the Village. He returned to St. Patrick’s in 2012 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Staten Island parish, where he was co-celebrant with Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
In an obituary in the St. Joseph’s newsletter, Alexander Glass, the parish secretary said, “We were flooded with calls from parishioners wishing to express their condolences, showing that Father Aldo is still deep in our hearts as we wish him farewell.”
