L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2015 www.italoamericano.org 15 L'Italo-Americano Dear Readers, Alaska, which became our 49th State in 1959, may not be a hotbed of Italian connec- tions, but I came across a few that I would like to share with you: For the love of God, several priests left their sunny homeland to serve Alaska, in fact, from 1886 to 1907 all of Alaska was under the (Torino) Turin Province of the Society of Jesus aka The Jesuits. The first of two Jesuit missionaries to set foot in Alaska was Italian born Fr. Pasquale Tosi, who arrived in spring 1887 and was the first General Superior of Jesuits in Alaska and is regarded as the true founder and organizer of the Catholic Church in Alaska. *** Fr. Pasquale Tosi was born in 1837 in the parish of St. Vito, diocese of Rimini, Italy. After completing studies in Bertinoro, he was ordained a diocesan priest in 1861. After he came to know the Jesuits, he decided to enter a Jesuit novitiate in Monaco. In 1865, he arrived in the United States to serve on the Rocky Mountain Mission. He first served the native people of the American Northwest, then in Spring of 1887 was the first of two Jesuits missionaries to serve in Alaska where he lived for over two decades. Fr. Tosi was blessed with a good facility for learning native languages, yet he never bothered to learn English well. In the late summer of 1892, Father Tosi traveled to Rome. There Pope Leo XIII in a private audience was so moved by Father Tosi's account of the sta- tus of the Church in Alaska that he granted more than what Father Tosi was prepared to ask for. In their native Italian, the Holy Father told him: "Andate, fate voi da Papa in quelle regioni!" ("Go and make your- self the Pope in those regions!"). He also proposed that Father Tosi be consecrated a bishop. To this, Father Tosi is said to have responded: "Holy Father, in Alaska I travel with dogs. When a storm come up, I make a hole in the snow and crawl in with the dogs and live there until the storm blows over. Please don't bring down so low the purple of a bishop". In the spring of 1893, the Holy See separated Alaska from the Diocese of Vancouver Island and made it a Prefecture Apostolic with Father Tosi as its first Prefect Apostolic. As Superior of the Alaska Mission, he traveled extensively more to scout out possible future mission sites than to evangelize. His trips by boat in the summer by dogteam in the winter took him to the Kuskokwim River regions to the Aleutian Islands and during most of the latter half of 1889 he was at Tununak, a Central Yup'ik Eskimo village on Nelson Island. He had accompanied Father Joseph M. Tréca, S.J., there and had helped him build a log cabin, which was used both as a church and a resi- dence. Father Tosi was the first Catholic priest to die and be buried in Alaska. *** Fr. Giovanni Lucchesi, was born to Italian nobility, in Genoa, Italy in 1858. In 1898, he arrived in Alaska. There he began 39 long years in the North at Holy Cross Mission. During the year 1900, Father Lucchesi's third summer in Alaska, a mysterious plague variously identified as influenza, measles, cholera, typhoid fever struck much of western Alaska, Holy Cross included. Whole vil- lages were wiped out. Tirelessly he ministered to the sick and dying. With his own hands he dug graves and buried a great number. Father Lucchesi spent most of his 39 years in Alaska at what were at the time its two major missions Holy Cross Mission and St.Mary's Mission Akulurak. During his younger years, Father Lucchesi was known for his "indefatigability on the trail, forever running ahead of the dogs breaking trail for them". However during the last years of his long life, he suffered much from hearing loss suffocation asthma and hernia. Fr. Lucchesi, born 80 years earlier, died on November 29, 1937 at Holy Cross and lies buried in the hillside cemetery there. *** Carmelo Giordano, S.J. was the first Jesuit Lay Brother to set foot in Alaska. He was born in 1860 in Sant'Anastasia near Naples, Italy. Brother Giordano's first American asssignment, a short one, was to the mission at DeSmet, Idaho. On August 21,1887 having entered Alaska along with Jesuit Fathers Tosi and Ragaru, by way of the Chilkoot Pass and the Yukon River, he arrived at Nuklukayet, today's Tanana. There, he met Father Robaut, S.J. The two spent most of the winter 1887-88 at Anvik. In February 1888, he accompanied Father Robaut downriver in Alaska until 1909. Except for two years spent at Holy Cross he spent most of his Alaskan years at Nulato. There he served in many different capacities. His short, stocky powerful body served him well as a general handyman, a jack- of-all-trades. He provided fire- wood for the mission stoves and fish and game for the table. He was said to be "a first class baker, also a great hunter". During his first year at Nulato he helped Father Tosi put up a log church there. After leaving Alaska, in 1909, Brother Giordano lived another 39 years in the Pacific Northwest. He spent his declin- ing years in Port Townsend, Washington, living there in Manresa Hall, the Jesuit tertian- ship. In the course of those years, "manifesting a brilliant retentive memory and an agile mind", he dictated his "Memoirs of the Alaskan Mission", a lengthy, col- orful account of his early years in Alaska. During those years he built "a massive stone shrine" to the Mother of God. He collected crutches to hang above it as proof of miracles wrought there. Brother Giordano died at the age of 88, in Port Townsend on May 1,1948. *** Jesuit missionaries have with- out interruption been in Alaska ever since Father Tosi arrived in 1887. By this year 2015 over 350 Jesuit priests and Lay Brothers have served for many years or a few on the Alaska Mission. Since 2001 an Italo- American Fr. Ross A. Tozzi S.J. has been trending to the spir- itual spots and souls in Snowy Nome, Alaska, however, long before his July 14, 2001 ordained to the priesthood for the Diocese of Fairbanks, Ross had served since 1989 as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. *** Ross Anthony Tozzi was born on November 24, 1960, in Munich Germany. As a boy with his parents and three brothers he traveled the world living succes- sively in Germany, Japan, North Carolina, New York and Maryland. In 1982 he graduated from Loyola College in Baltimore with a B.A. degree in accounting. After graduating with a M.B.A. from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Nashville's Vanderbilt University in 1984, he joined the U.S. Army. For five years he served as a finance officer: England; Oklahoma; and Fort Harrison Indiana. In 1989, Ross left the mili- tary. The same year, his life's journey took him north. He joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps. As a member of the Corps, he was assigned to serve for a year on the staff that operat- ed Radio KNOM in Nome, Alaska, which went on the air with a beat up transmitter in 1947 but he wound up serving at KNOM for three. During those three years, he also worked for the Nome-based Northwest Campus of the University of Alaska as its business manager. Blessed with a generous, volun- teering heart, Ross next volun- teered his time and talents to the Franciscan Friars in charge of St.Anthony Indian Mission in Zuni, New Mexico. During those years he took his summer "vacation" in Nome, there helping to close out KNOM's books and to audit its finances for the Diocese of Fairbanks. *** You can vicariously visit KNOM Radio Mission in Nome, Alaska and all the outlying vil- lages with radio reception, each month via their newsletter, "The Nome Static", in the comfort of your cozy home. For more info call or write KNOM Radio Mission PO Box 988 Nome Alaska 99762 (907)443-5221 www.knom.org *** For more info on the History of the church in Alaska, a refer- ence work in the format of an encyclopedia "Alaska Catholica" by Louis L. Renner S.J. who spent forty years in the land of the Midnight Sea is an outstand- ing resource.

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