TOSI, Pasquale – Jesuit, missionary, b. at S. Vito (Santarcangelo di Romagna, Forlì) 25 Apr. 1835, d. at Juneau (Alaska) 14 Jan. 1898.
Already a priest in the Society, in 1862, he set out for the missions among the Flathead Indians of the Rocky Mountains (United States) in 1865, governing them for twenty years. In 1876 he accompanied the Bishop of Vancouver, Mgr Seghers, under whose jurisdiction Alaska then lay, to found a mission among the Eskimos. On learning of the bishop’s murder at the hands of his unfaithful servant, he was obliged to return to San Francisco to obtain missionaries; then, re-entering Alaska, he began the work entrusted to him. He founded several Christian communities, undertook long and perilous journeys by sled, reaching regions never before trodden by human foot, learned many Eskimo languages and dialects, composed a grammar and dictionary of the Nulato dialect, and wrote numerous lengthy reports on the country, its origins, religion, customs and manners, which proved of great service to geographers, naturalists and ethnologists, as well as to the government itself, which supplied him with the necessary instruments. On 24 July 1894 the mission was raised to an apostolic prefecture, and Tosi became its first prefect, thus widening the scope of his apostolate by founding further stations and undertaking fresh labours and hardships to open the way for his colleagues.
He wrote many letters to several periodicals: Lettres de Jersey, de Vals, of Woodstock, and to the Missions catholiques; and also: La missione dell'Alaska. Memoria del r. p. P. T., superiore della missione, first published in the Civiltà Cattolica and then separately (Rome 1893), and again with a preface and appendix by Fr E. Rosa, L'Alaska e i suoi esploratori (ibid. 1926). In 1935 a commemorative plaque was placed on Tosi’s birthplace.