During her eventful life, Toni Bosco has amassed plenty of
reasons to have felt abandoned by God. A mentally ill mother,
heavy responsibilities early in life, a disastrous arranged
marriage, the death of three of her seven children – the list
is a painful one. But, instead of turning her back on God,
the 82-year-old author of more than 18 books and a syndicated
Catholic News Service columnist for more than 35 years
decided to embrace Him even more.
Relying on the life lessons imparted to her by her beloved
father and the teachings of her Catholic faith, Bosco focused
on being grateful to God for the blessings in her life. It
hasn’t always been easy, and she was often shaken to the
core, but by remaining close to God, she has stayed true to
her faith and to herself.
Early life
Antoinette “Toni” Bosco was born Sept. 18, 1928, in Rome,
N.Y., to Joseph Oppedisano, an Italian butcher, and his wife,
Mary Sgambellone. In a recent phone interview, Bosco
described her father as “the light of my life” and said she
is grateful for the man “who taught me we had to be good to
people, we had to help people, never be cruel, never be
angry,” she said.
Many of Oppedisano’s life lessons were learned during his
three-year struggle to leave Italy (starting at age 13)
during World War I. When he made it to the United States, he
immediately adopted an American spirit, learning English and
becoming an American citizen.
“He had seen so much stuff in Italy that he despised,” Bosco
said. “You had no rights. He was glad to get out and come to
this country where there was freedom and opportunity for
everybody.”
Oppedisano and his wife began a family, and Bosco was the
second of their eight children. With her mother ill, Bosco
helped raise her younger siblings. The family attended the
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany, N.Y., going
to Mass many mornings.
As Bosco got older, life got more intense. She attended the
College of St. Rose in Albany, with the idea of being a
doctor. Unsure of the possibility of a medical career in the
late 1940s, she graduated with a degree in chemistry. In
strict Italian tradition, a marriage was arranged for her by
her grandfather and father – a marriage that, she said,
turned out to be a “disaster.”
“He made me work. He stole every penny I earned,” she said.
“It was terrible.”
In 10 years, Bosco gave birth to six children. She added a
seventh to the clan when she spotted a homeless kid hanging
out in the post office to keep warm.
“I knew he was homeless – I could tell by the way he was
ragged,” she said. “I looked at the kid and I said, ‘Are you
cold? Are you hungry? I just baked a cake.'”
She received permission to adopt the boy – Sterling – and
gave him an education. He later became a police officer and
died at age 68 of the heart condition doctors had told him
wouldn’t let him live past 25.
“God is good,” Bosco said. “God is good.”
In order to help support her growing bunch, Bosco began to
freelance from her home, writing mostly on Catholic and
social issues. She wrote her first book, a biography on a
bishop from Belgium, and slowly began to use her talent for
the written word to support her family.
Striking out
After a decade of misery in her marriage, Bosco had had
enough. She divorced her husband, struck out into the world
and got a job working for the Long Island Catholic, the
newspaper for the Diocese of Rockville Centre. For 10 years
she worked as a Catholic reporter, feeling the support of a
community of people who truly cared for her.
“That was a change in my life,” she said. “People in the
Church were so wonderful and helped me realize God was good
and I could support my children.”
In 1972, she took a job promoting the health sciences center
of Stony Brook University on Long Island. A couple of years
later, she began writing a regular, syndicated column for
Catholic News Service in Washington, D.C. Thirty-six years
later she is still at it, though she now writes monthly
instead of weekly.
Bosco left Stony Brook in 1982, and accepted the job as
editor of a daily newspaper in Litchfield County, Conn.,
mostly to be near to her ailing father in Albany.
“The last two years of my father’s life I got to see a lot of
him,” she said.
During her 17 years with the Litchfield County Times,
she continued her book writing, drawing from events in her
life that, unfortunately, provided her with dramatic
material.
Truth in writing
To go down the list of Bosco’s bibliography is to follow the
tragic sequence of her life’s events – and to watch her rise
from the ashes. Three of Bosco’s seven children are gone:
Sterling died of his heart condition; her youngest, Peter,
who was mentally ill, committed suicide in 1991; and two
years later her son John and his wife, Nancy, were murdered
by an 18-year-old gunman in their Montana home.
“I was ready to die myself,” Bosco said. Instead, she turned
to God.
“Your faith gets shaken by a lot of things,” she said. “Yet
my faith never got shaken to the point where, at the end of
the day, I could not be on my knees thankful for the gifts
that the Lord had given me.”
And she wrote.
In 1994, she published The Pummeled Heart: Finding Peace
through Pain, which, as one reviewer wrote, “offers true
insight into the question of how a person suffering with
grief can move from staggering tragedy and loss to a richer
personal wisdom and closer connection to God.” In 2001, she
released Shaken Faith: Hanging in there when God seems far
away.
What is perhaps her best-known work stemmed from her life’s
most difficult decision. Five months after the killer of John
and Nancy had been caught, Bosco said, he was placed on death
row. Her family came together and decided they wanted to
spare him.
“We miss (John and Nancy) so much, but at the same time we
did not want to say that because our loved ones were killed,
now it was all right for us to be killers,” Bosco said. “I am
so grateful to be a part of the Church of the Lord Jesus
Christ that has told us, in no uncertain terms, that we
should be for life.”
Her book, Choosing Mercy: A Mother of Murder Victims
Pleads to End the Death Penalty, focuses on this theme,
one that was a real struggle for her.
“Life isn’t easy,” she said. “I say to myself what would
Jesus do? I think Jesus would say love one another, no matter
what. That is not something I have always been able to
achieve, but I have tried.”
“Keep learning … don’t ever stop”
At 82, Bosco is still writing a monthly column for Catholic
News Service and for her home diocesan newspaper, the
Fairfield County Catholic.
“I think God is telling me I’m still supposed to work,” she
said. “I read all the time, my mind is active. What am I
supposed to do, sit down and knit blankets?”
While thought or prayer is fleeting, Bosco said, writing
“solidifies what my prayer has been teaching me, what my
prayer gets me to think (and) what my prayer gets me to
believe.”
“There’s an awful lot that I would forget if I hadn’t put it
down in writing,” she said. “I’m very grateful to the good
Lord for the ability to write.”
She spends her prayer time reading the Old Testament and the
psalms, but mostly, she said, she lingers over the Gospels or
prays on her knees in front of a plaque of the Sacred Heart
of Jesus.
“I would not have gotten through my life without my faith,”
she said. “I do believe that the Lord Jesus is with me all
the time. I really believe that He’s with my boys.”
Bosco has learned that you never know what’s going to come
next in life, but no matter what, it is essential to keep the
faith.
“I know every day my prayer is ‘Be with me and let me know
that You are with me,'” she said. “So far that has sustained
me. Hopefully it will always.”
