Brother FERDINANDO TOSTO

(al secolo: Michele)

Simple professed

Born at Castelvenere (Benevento) on 22 March 1925.

Died in Rome, St John Calibita Hospital, 5 April 1945.

He was the second of seven children born into a simple hard-working family of farm labourers. He was an easy-going, mild and good-natured young man. As a child, Michael worked as a shepherd, and in adolescence he took up manual labour in the countryside to help support his large family which, while not wealthy, was rich in human values and the qualities that would shape his character. He combined work and prayer, which was to become a dominant feature of his vocation. His meeting with a Passionist Father led to his decision to enter the Passionist Novitiate in Pontecorvo (Frosinone).

For health reasons, after about 18 months with the Passionists, he was obliged to return home to his family. At the end of the summer of 1942 he asked to join the Hospitaller Order of St John of God in Benevento in the "Sacred Heart of Jesus Hospital". He was received on Tiber Island in Rome, the headquarters of the Rome Province and the Novitiate, where he was admitted with the name of Brother Ferdinando. From that moment on, he embarked single-mindedly on his journey to follow Christ more closely and, despite his frail constitution, he worked tirelessly in the wards in the most humble services and in caring for the sick, comforting them and praying for them and with them.

There are many oral testimonies by some of the Brothers and friends in the Novitiate about this young Brother and his faith in God and Our Lady, especially during his sickness.

Fr Gabriele Russotto, his Novitiate Master, wrote, "I knew Brother Ferdinando Tosto personally and I dealt with him throughout the time he lived with us on Tiber Island. I remember him as a very devout Brother: with a very modest gaze and unassuming behaviour, humble and absorbed by holy thoughts, a lover of prayer and patiently enduring the sufferings of his long illness that led to his death (...). I seem to remember administering him Extreme Unction and commended his soul to God. In his final days, knowing that death was approaching, he would say to me with edifying candour, ‘Father, when I am on the point of death, remind me of Our Lady as our Mother’. He was very devoted to the Blessed Virgin”

To this testimony can be added that of his spiritual director and confessor, Fr Domenico Mondrone S.J., who wrote of him: "He had a clear and increasingly certain presentiment of the approach of heaven - at the age of just 20, Our Lord found him ripe for Him. He chose him to join the Brothers who had gone before him in glory – a wonderful and eloquent example of detachment from everything and of generous self-giving until death".

The necrology of the Rome Province records this short note about him: "He should be held up to our young Brothers as a model of perfect observance, spirit of prayer, humility and patience, especially in his painful illness. He breathed his last in the Lord's embrace, surrounded by his Superiors and fellow Novices".