Father Aldo

Manchester was the city of Aldo Tapparo's birth in the year 1938 and it was here where he was educated until his family moved to Birmingham when he was 13 years old. He continued his education at George Dixon Grammar School and at the age of 18 entered the Hospitaller Brothers of St. John of God where he remained for the next 22 years.

He was involved with nursing the sick for many years until obedience directed him to study medical laboratory sciences after which he ran the department of Pathology in the Order's General Hospital in Scorton, North Yorkshire.

Having fulfilled the various offices of Vocation Director, Prior, Provincial Counsellor and Master of Formation he was asked to study for the priesthood by his Superiors who sent him to Oscott College. Ordained in 1976 he served the Community and the patients for almost two years but it soon became apparent that with the training he had received he was more prepared for an active Diocesan priestly ministry than the restrictive ministry that the monastery hospital afforded him. With the consent of his Superiors and the agreement of George Patrick Dwyer, Archbishop of Birmingham he came to the diocese on 1st April 1978 and was appointed to the parish of the Holy Family, Coventry where his parish priest was Canon Bernard McKenna.

The transition from monastic to diocesan life was trouble free for Father Aldo due to the kindness and understanding of his Parish Priest and he thrived in his new surroundings. It was with great sadness that he left the Holy Family in 1980 having been directed to go to the parish of St. Austin in Stafford with Father Cathal Cassidy. It was here where he had his first taste of School Chaplaincy work in a Secondary School having been appointed to Blessed William Howard School.

Father Aldo's stay in Stafford was short and during the interregnum that occurred on the retirement of Archbishop Dwyer, Bishop Philip Cleary appointed him to serve as an assistant priest in the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Redditch. He worked in that vast parish with many Mass centres from 1981 until 1984 and had St. Augustine's High School as his responsibility.

In 1984 Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville appointed him Parish Priest of St. Peter's, Eynsham in Oxfordshire and he became the first chaplain of St. Augustine's School, the new Catholic/Anglican joint venture in Oxford. St. Peter's was a parish on the Poor Mission when he arrived but the time he left in 1987 it had become self-supporting.

His next assignment was the parish of the Immaculate Conception, Bicester. During the 15 years that he was there many changes and improvements were to be achieved. Having seen the church consecrated in the year 2000 and celebrating his 25 years of priesthood in 2001, Archbishop Vincent Nichols directed that he move to St. Peter's, Royal Leamington Spa.

The move took place on the 4th January 2002 and as Father Aldo said on the occasion of his Induction "I walked out of the Immaculate Conception, Bicester. It is my great hope that I'll be carried out of St. Peter's."

For further information or comments please contact info@stpeterapostle.org